Here in Baltimore, the ever-booming crab cake trade is propping up more than just restaurants and tourism. Advertisers make embarrassing attempts to appeal to our obsession. There’s documentaries about the search for the best crab cake. And more and more, our local publications are fishing for clicks by urging people to vote for the region’s best crabcake.
Everyone is compelled to have a favorite. Some are loyal to tradition, standing by Faidley’s and accepting no imitators. Others take pride in preferring something newer and better – the old standard simply won’t do.
There’s an unspoken commonality to all contenders for ‘Baltimore’s Best Crab Cake’: they must be jumbo lump. Anything less is perceived as unworthy of consideration; a rip-off; an insult. The fact that this requirement elevates our most beloved food item to a luxury seems beside the point. The truly knowledgeable must be willing and able to indulge enough so as to actually have an opinion which is the best among them.
To be perfectly honest, I stopped taking this plunge years ago. I rarely had a crabcake worth the price of admission. The best crabcakes are made at home. And of those, the very very best… turned out to not be jumbo lump meat at all.
I’ve been wielding this contrarian opinion for awhile now, intending to eventually compose the rant you are reading now. But when I began to do a little background research into just when this jumbo lump madness began, I got more than I bargained for. I ended up back at the origin of the crab cake itself; sifting through legends and lies.
Richard Q. Yardley from “Fun With Seafood”, Virginia Roeder, 1960
One oft-repeated yarn about the origin of the crabcake is that the Native Americans of the Chesapeake region made their crab cakes with cornmeal, and fried them in bear fat. This story comes from “Chesapeake” by James Michener, a fictional novel (redundancy intentional). Michener is remembered for his extensive research and attention to detail, but he’s no culinary historian.
I reviewed documents from Captain John Smith accounts and “A Briefe Relation of the Voyage unto Maryland” by Father Andrew White, to the works of anthropologist Helen Rountree and I found no accounts of foodways remotely resembling the method described in “Chesapeake.”
Finally, I reached out to folklorist Bernard Herman, who has made a study of Eastern Shore native and early settler foodways. He had a lot of input which I may as well quote verbatim:
“Let’s start with fried foods. Frying requires both oil and a utensil that can withstand high heat. Skillets and frying pans appear in the earliest estate records on the Eastern Shore of Virginia with references dating to the 1630s (the public records here are the oldest continuous records in the US – unbroken from 1632). So we know that the capacity for frying foods dates to the earliest European and African presence. As far as I know, there is not a frying component to the cuisines of first peoples – the scant record suggesting that the armature of their foodways centered on “stews” (understood here as one-pot dishes), roasted, or dried/preserved preparations. Thus, my first reaction… is that the crab cake is something that is most likely not a product of indigenous foodways.
Now to the crab cake itself. The crabcake at its heart is a kind of fritter – and fritters have a very complex history. “Cake” in this case describes a pan-fried fritter – not unlike oyster cakes. The fritter traditions of the Chesapeake are the product of what the great food historian Jessica Harris terms a “braided tradition” a coming together of many cultural strands. Michael Twitty, for example, describes African fritter traditions in circulation in the 18th-c. Virginia and Maryland.”
It seems that the notion that we are engaging in an eons-old tradition when we eat a crabcake may be a bit of romantic embellishment.
The labor-intensive step of picking crabs for crabcakes, like our beaten biscuits, recalls instead the other major injustice that our state was founded on, and the fact that, as Michael Twitty put it, in Fighting Old Nep: Foodways of Enslaved Afro-Marylanders, 1634-1864, “the plantation was a training ground for a future life of serving high society.”
Other accounts state that “it was not until 1930 in Crosby Gaige’s New York World’s Fair cook book that the term ‘crab cake’ appears in print, where it referred to the delicacy as ‘Baltimore crab cake.’”
“Cookery with a Chafing Dish”, 1891. Thomas J. Murrey
I am not sure how this demonstrable falsehood can continue to circulate in the google age, but so-named recipes appeared at least as early as 1891. That year, Thomas Jefferson Murrey included a recipe for “Crab Cakes” in his book “Cookery with a Chafing Dish.” Murrey was a New York caterer famous for seafood – his nickname was “Terrapin Tom” – and he had also worked in Washington, DC. It may be worth noting that eleven years earlier, his 1880 book “Valuable Cooking Receipts” contains a suggested menu provided by “a patriotic son of Maryland” in which crabcakes are notably absent. Murrey was a celebrity epicure whose influence spread not only through the books he wrote but through his catering. He died by mysterious and sudden suicide in 1900.
In 1894, a recipe appeared in “Mrs. Charles Gibson’s Maryland and Virginia Cook Book” for “Crab Cakes for Breakfast”:
Even before the published recipes, crab cakes are mentioned in newspapers. An 1873 tidbit in the Harrisburg Telegraph raved excitedly that a new establishment, The Harris House, offered a bill of fare including “everything that can be desired” such as meats of all kinds, asparagus, stewed turtle, “ice cream of different flavors,” hard shell crabs, deviled crabs, and “crab cakes.”
To be fair, there is a possibility that the crab cakes in the Harris House might not have been like the crabcakes we eat today. In 1901, chef H. Fryankln Hall wrote a definitive seafood cookbook for the era, “300 Ways to Cook and Serve Shell Fish.” Born in Washington DC in 1853, Hall serves as a prime example of the fame and success that black chefs could hope to enjoy through the cooking and catering trades at the turn of the 20th century. At the time his book was published, he’d worked for some 30 years at hotels and restaurants in Rhode Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and was currently working at the Boothby Hotel in Philadelphia.
“300 Ways to Cook and Serve Shell Fish” contains a crab cake. Hall’s “Crab Cakes” were more like pancakes containing crabmeat:
The Harris House may well have served this other form of ‘Crab Cake’ from Pennsylvania, or it could be that the crabcake recipe we know today traveled to Harrisburg from Maryland, shipped along with the crabs themselves, up the Susquehanna River.
H. Franklyn Hall’s book does contain a recipe for lobster or crab “cutlet”. As Bernard Herman mentioned, the true crabcake lineage likely belongs in the fritter family. These recipes tend to be called “cutlets” or “patties”. Lady Nugent, wife of a Governor of Jamaica (1801 to 1806) during the time when the island was under British rule and enslavement, wrote a diary in which she described the food of the colony. While she raved about a crab pepper-pot, she also passingly mentioned being served “flesh & fowl, crab patties &c &c” as part of a lavish dinner.
Across the seas in Edinburgh, a recipe appeared in Mrs. Williamson’s 1849 “The Practice of Cookery and Pastry” for crab or lobster cutlets, the meat mixed with pepper, lemon pickle and gravy, made “in the form of lamb cutlets”, breaded and fried, and served garnished with a crab claw.
In 1870, “Jennie June’s American Cookbook” offered up one of those “from one housewife to another” cookbooks that we know and love to this day. In it, Jennie June’s recipe for “Crab [or] Lobster Cutlets” stewed and seasoned crab meat in stock before mixing in flour and spices then breading and frying the cutlets.
These recipes appear to be bridging the divide between the modern form of crabcake and recipes dating back to Robert May’s 1660 “To Stew Crabs” and Hannah Glasse’s 1747 method “To Dress A Crab”.
The Art of Cookery, Hannah Glasse, 1747
Still, the relationship remained fast and loose for decades to come, with deviled crabs served in the shell retaining their popularity (and eventual influence on the crabcake formula) up until the early 1900′s.
The Democratic Press in Columbus Ohio ran a lamentation about the popularity of deviled crab in 1883. “They are eaten by epicures, epicacs and other foreigners. They cost about fifty cents apiece, and are the least food for the most money extant,” the angry writer declared. “Devilled crabs are never eaten in private. What is the use of a man mortgaging all his real estate to buy devilled crabs to eat when no one is looking at him?”
As early as 1835, “crabs could be marketed much more readily in the form of crab meat than in the shell”. The demand for deviled crab still necessitated that the shells be sold in order to pack the meat back into.
The industry progressed slowly, especially with the much-more-economically-important oyster vying for resources. The Baltimore Sun reported that 1884 was a boom year for crab harvests – but that the crab picking business, which was “carried out in private residences” was “yet in its infancy.” Interestingly it is noted that “when prepared by the regular pickers the meat is in larger pieces than it is when picked by the old-fashioned restaurants, and to many it is not so pleasing to the taste.”
Over in Crisfield, the market for picked crab meat was still described as “of no importance” in 1891. Only two plants were hiring women to pick the meat, which was packed on ice in buckets and sent to hotels and restaurants. Crisfield was the number one source for blue crabs nationally at that time – with the trade occasionally escalating in violence to rival the oyster wars. In 1894 the Sun reported a rain of bullets “flying in every direction” at illegal crabbers in Dorchester County. The crabbers (plus a toddler they had sleeping onboard) made it out alive but were fined heavily and their boats confiscated.
Advertisement, 1943
The crab dogma that is inescapable in Maryland nowadays began to set in at this time. One indignant woman wrote to the Baltimore Sun to express outrage upon learning that Philadelphians were boiling crabs.
“I hardly have patience to tell those Philadelphians, but it may be good missionary work, that the way to get a dozen hard crabs ready for picking is to put them, alive, in a round pot over a good fire, pour half a pint of vinegar and a gill of water in the pot, cover up with wet seaweed if at hand, if not with ordinary fresh and green sod grass from the yards; if neither is accessible, with anything which will keep the steam in and let the vinegar steam cook the crabs. Boiled crab meat is not fit to be eaten. To use it in deviled crabs or croquettes spoils the whole dish.” – A Talbot Lady’s Indignation over a Philadelphia Recipe, Baltimore Sun, 1896
Mary Elizabeth Wilson Sherwood, who was born in New Hampshire but resided in Washington DC declared in “The Art of Entertaining” that “A devilled crab is considered good, but it should be cooked by a negro expert from Maryland.”
The urban preference for crabcakes and deviled crab prepared outside the home could explain why so few recipes for these items exist in the 19th century cooking manuscripts collection of the Maryland Historical Society.
In a previous post I began to explore the fraught history of the African Americans who achieved financial success while being pigeonholed and fetishized in the Maryland culinary culture of the late 19th and early 20th century. This took place in hotels, clubs, restaurants and private kitchens but also spilled out onto the streets of Baltimore as the “crab men” roamed the city with baskets of deviled crabs and crabcakes for sale. The Baltimore Sun lamented in 1905 that this tradition was dying out. The prices of supplies were rising, and white customers refused to pay the black vendors more than 5 cents for their wares.
The sale of crab meat was becoming increasingly industrialized, and its terms codified. A 1905 book, “The Crab Industry of Maryland” described the classes of crab meat: flakes, ordinary, and “fat meat”, “the flakes being considered much superior to the other because they are whiter and firmer.” This is today’s jumbo lump. All of this meat was still shipped with crab shells used in the serving of deviled crab.
Crabcakes had become a celebrated part of Maryland life, appearing in poetry in newspapers like the Frederick News and the Baltimore Sun. “Summertown,” a 1910 poem by “The Benztown Bard” Folger McKinsey made an explicit association between the appreciation of crabcakes and the ambiance of the street vendor:
“Under an awning of canvas, striped, emerald, brown or red;
Watermelon, a cent a slice, cooling and tempting spread;
Mystical bell of the crabcake man wending his way along;
Chanting the lilt of the rhythmic rune borne of the crabcake song”
Advertisements for “lump” crab meat were making an appearance, with “flake” now relegated to second-class status. “Back Fin” still served as an alternate term for the desirable large chunks of crab meat. By the late 1930s, restaurants were advertising crabcakes that were “all lump.”
In the early 1940′s, a Baltimore Sun Columnist named John O’ Ren got into a debate with a reader. The banter spanned over several columns. O’Ren considered whether ‘Deviled crab A’ la Maryland’ was more about the ingredients, or the culture and economy surrounding it. He created a hierarchy of ways to enjoy crab: steamed crabs, deviled crabs, crab soup. He conceded fourth place to the crab cake, while the reader “Crabtown Cook” asserted that crab cakes “properly prepared” could be just as good as deviled crab. Eventually another reader chimed in to lament how much of O’Ren’s column’s space was being wasted on the topic of crabs.
A Guide to Maryland Seafood, mid 1990s
The confusion over the grades of crab continued for some time. Local food authority of the 50s and 60s Virginia Roeder listed the types as “claw or dark,” “regular white,” “special white” and “backfin or deluxe” while her nationally syndicated counterpart Clementine Paddleford explained the classes as “lump,” “flake” and “the brownish meat from the claws” which she said was preferred for cakes and to devil.
A later Baltimore Sun food writer, Rob Kasper, expressed dismay at the ongoing confusion in 1988. “As recently as five years ago, when you bought a package labeled ‘backfin lump,’ it was the king of the hill, top of line, the best meat the blue crab had to offer. Now instead of the top of the line, backfin is second, sometimes even third in line,” yielding to lump and jumbo lump. Competition was shifting the terms towards the more descriptive. To this day, the terms remain arbitrary but have become more generally accepted.
My own bias against the jumbo lump hegemony was first backed up in the Sun as early as 1948, when Eastern-shoreman W.C. Mills shared his crabcake recipe which follows my own preference: “All the meat goes into one pile – claw, lump and flake,” and with it the fat. “The fat makes all the difference in the world… packers can’t ship it; it spoils too quickly.” (Growing up, this is what we called the ‘mustard’.)
Woodberry Kitchen’s Spike Gjerde declared in 2011 that he “would love to be able to buy a whole-crab mix in a single container.” (”Crab lovers: Can you get over the lump?”, Baltimore Sun, 12/5/11) Having some celebrity chef plus food writer Richard Gorelick share my opinion made me feel credentialed, even if I’d been beaten to the punch.
Studying history is more like a day of snacking than a satisfying meal. Sure, I learned a lot of things were untrue, but what about truths? Where’s the zinger? Did Terrapin Tom popularize the crab-cake? Did the preference for lump stem from the suspicions of fish or other adulterants in crabcakes sold on the street? Was the crabcake ever truly democratic or just another of unequal Baltimore’s elitist traditions?
“Indians of Early Maryland” Harold Randall Manakee , 1959
There was no definitive culinary moment happening as the white man stole the land, the water, and the crabcake too. No Worlds Fair bringing the crabcake into the spotlight.
Crab cakes were made in many forms, and many hands, in bondage, in fancy hotels, in make-do kitchens. They’ve been made from claw meat, jumbo lump, with bread, no bread, seasoned or plain. These options have been alternately guided by gourmet preference and everyday necessity.
The story of our favorite regional dish may not be exceptional, but it is emblematic.
Recipe for four small crabcakes:
- 6 steamed crabs
- a slice of bread if you want, or:
- cracker crumbs if you want
- milk if you are using bread
- mayonnaise if you are into mayonnaise
- 1 egg if you like form and tidiness but hate mayonnaise or didn’t feel like using mayonnaise
Directions:
Pick all of the meat and fat out of your crabs. If you are using bread, tear up the bread and soak it in a little milk. (W.C. Mills did it that way so I did too.) I used half of a potato roll hot dog bun. Yeah, that’s right; come at me, bro.
Beat the egg or put some mayonnaise into a bowl, mix the crumbs or the wet bread or whatever… basically mix all the stuff that isn’t crab together really well. Then gently fold in the crab so it’s evenly coated.
Fry it or broil it if that’s your thing. Serve with home-made tartar sauce (if u want), a little bit of smugness and lots of love.
