[Sca-cooks] Soft Shell Crab

Stefan li Rous StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
Mon May 10 01:44:54 PDT 2010



On May 5, 2010, at 7:42 AM, Daniel & Elizabeth Phelps wrote:
<<< With soft shell crab in my experience you eat the whole thing, soft shell and all.  As in I can't believe I ate the whole thing.  Tasty very tasty. >>>

To which Adamantius added:
<<< There _is_ some prep involved, so normally you don't really eat the whole thing: the pointed ends of the carapace are lifted up (they are sort of floppy and fold up) and the gills (white, finger-like fibrous masses of cartilage and vascular tissue) removed from under them, usually with shears or simply pulled off), the the "head" end sliced off (basically eyes and mouth structure, and the stomach sac comes with it), and the tail flap twisted off.

In this way, that's most of the internal organs other than muscle and the liver removed right there...>>>

Has anyone spent any time looking through period crab recipes? Were soft shell crabs known and eaten that way in period? I assume crabs molt the same way and probably at a similar time in Europe as well as North America. A history of crab fishing in North America might also refer back to it being done in Europe.

What about crab cakes?

Thanks,
  Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****





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