=Crabs, Soft-shell.=--These should be cooked as soon as possible after being caught, as their flavor rapidly deteriorates after being exposed to the air. Select crabs as lively as possible; remove the feathery substance under the pointed sides of the shells; rinse them in cold water; drain; season with salt and pepper; dredge them in flour, and fry in hot fat.
Many serve them rolled in eggs and cracker-dust; but thus they are not as good.
=Crab Croquettes.=--Take one pound of crab-meat; gently press out the juice, and put it in a bowl with a tablespoonful of fine crumbs, half a teaspoonful of salt, half a saltspoonful of pepper, a dash of anchovy essence, the yolks of two eggs, and a very little cold water. If the eggs are not enough to make it the proper consistency, bind the ingredients together, and place on ice until wanted; then work into corks or cone-shaped forms, dip them in beaten egg, then in crumbs, and fry in hot fat.
=Crab Patties, à la Bechamel.=--Prepare the shells the same as for oyster patties (which see). Put into a saucepan half an ounce of butter, half a medium-sized onion minced, half a pound of minced raw veal, one small carrot shredded; toss about for two minutes to fry, but not to color; add two tablespoonfuls of flour, stir it about with the vegetables; then add three pints of hot water, or if convenient use hot soup-stock instead; add a pint of boiling cream. Season with half a teaspoonful of salt and a saltspoonful of white pepper. Simmer one hour, and strain into a saucepan. Add to each pint of sauce half a wineglassful of cream. Simmer until reduced enough to coat a spoon; strain it again into a crock, and whisk it until cold, to prevent a thick top from forming. When wanted for patties, or any thing else, boil one pint of it with an ounce of butter, whisking it thoroughly. Prepare a quart of solid crab-meat, either picked from the shells or purchased already prepared; add it to a pint of the sauce; strew in a few shredded mushrooms: fill the crab-shells with this, and serve. On fast-days, omit veal and stock from meats, and use milk instead.
[This very excellent sauce was named after the Marquis de Bechamel, a worthless court-lounger and steward under Louis XIV. Why his unsavory memory has been perpetuated by a gastronomic monument of worth, is one of those inexplicable historical facts that students of the art of cookery are continually stumbling upon. The close observer will not fail, however, to discover that nearly all dishes named after old French celebrities were stolen bodily from old Venetian and Provençal books of cookery, and were re-baptized after some of the most notorious profligates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many of these old cook-books, like “Opusculum de Obsoniis de Honesta Voluptate,” a volume printed at Venice, 1475 (the first cookery-book published), and others, contain recipes almost identical with French cookery of the past few centuries.]