Open just about any Maryland community cookbook from the 1980s, and you’re likely to find a recipe for Crab Meltaways. They’re easy, tasty, and great for company.
Most recipes call for “Kraft Old English Cheese Spread,” a product that, as far as I can tell, debuted in the 1930s. It is likely that the recipe for Crab Meltaways (also known as “Crabbies”) was developed by Kraft in the 1960s, but there are other variations without the product. John Shields included a recipe from Susan Corsaro in his 1992 “Chesapeake Bay Crab Cookbook,” using cheddar cheese, fresh garlic, and parsley.
1932
The ingredients are gently mixed, piled atop split English muffins (often cut into wedges), and frozen. From the frozen state, they broil into a bubbly melted pile of deliciousness.
One of my recipes suggests canned crabmeat because these don’t really necessitate the good stuff.
Jukie Todd from Crisfield didn’t have that concern. A lifetime employee of her family’s MeTompkin Bay Oyster Company, she surely had plenty of crab to work with. Her recipe was included in the Women’s Ministries Faith Fellowship Church’s 1989 cookbook, unfortunately named “Plantation Favorites.” Todd had died in 1986, so the recipe must have been shared by friend or family.
The (possibly questionable) story of the late-1970s “Grannie’s Goodies from Somerset County” cookbook is that the residents of the Tawes Nursing Home in Crisfield complained about the food so much that the director asked for recipes, which were later compiled into the book. In the books’ preface, the nursing home’s activity director and compiler of the book, Becky Blizzard, simply stated that it was a fundraising project to buy a minibus. Whatever the circumstances, this book was a happy find for me at the Pratt Library. A second edition, “Tawes Home Cookbook #2,” was produced a few years later and sold well enough to go into a second printing.
“The Baltimore Sun is trying to coax the Governor of Maryland to appoint a yankee festival… Why don’t our Governor move in the important matter of appointing a day for thanksgiving? Pumpkin pies are coming from all quarters, and no day set apart yet.” – The Baltimore Sun, 11/15/1837
The Baltimore Sun was in its infancy when the newspaper took up an obsessive crusade to bring Thanksgiving to Maryland. For several years prior, other Maryland newspapers had reported on states whose governors had proclaimed a November day of thanksgiving. New York, Connecticut and New Hampshire in 1825; Massachusetts in 1830; Maine, Ohio, and Michigan in 1837; Ohio in 1839. (In some states, the announcements were made annually or the actual dates changed year-to-year.)
The Sun began publication in May of 1837. When their own November thanksgiving announcements started rolling out, most of them were accompanied with pleas to Governor Thomas Veazey to appoint a Thanksgiving in Maryland.
The announcements almost always mentioned pumpkin pie. In 1838 the Sun printed the news that The Boston Times described Thanksgiving day as a joyous occasion with “cider, frolic and fried dough-nuts.” “Where were the pumpkin pies?” the Sun replied accusatorially. While other papers such as the Maryland Gazette waxed spiritual about gratitude and strife, “the prayer of thanksgiving as well as that of invocation,” the Sun, in Baltimore food-obsessed fashion, continued to focus on the pie.
In 1842 the Sun plea to Governor Francis Thomas made a more serious appeal for the holiday by mentioning what a joyous day it was, how it had been adopted even by governors who were not “Yankee men”, and how Maryland had so many causes to be thankful. They even lamented the years of reporting on the official Thanksgiving proclamations of “‘this, that and the other’ governor[s] of ‘this that and the other’ state[s]’” without Maryland having a thanksgiving of our own.
The choice to abandon the pumpkin-pie talk for the patriotic overtures was a wise one. On November 19th, 1842, Governor Thomas declared that the 14th of December would be a day of “thanksgiving, praise and prayer to the Almighty, because of the manifold blessings enjoyed by [Marylanders].” The Sun smugly printed the proclamation while mentioning that they “might take some small credit to [them]selves for a suggestive agency.”
The newspaper tactfully left pumpkin pie out of that announcement, but they later printed suggestions on how to observe the new holiday, sneaking the pie in behind piety:
“The custom in other States, where a day has been set apart of this kind, is in the forenoon to go to church, then dine on roast turkies, plumb puddings and pumpkin pies, in the afternoon innocently amuse themselves and close the evening with a grand ball.” – The Baltimore Sun, 11/29/1842
A correspondent from Ellicott’s Mills wrote on December 1st, 1843, the day after that year’s Thanksgiving that “it is said that pumpkin pie will make a Yankee’s mouth water. Be that as it may; but give me good fat turkey and pumpkin pie… that pie! O, that pumpkin pie! Who can properly express the deliciousness of that pumpkin pie?”
Suggested Thanksgiving Menu, Indiana, 1888
Tastes change. In 1907 the Baltimore Sun had done a turnabout on pumpkin pie, printing an editorial which declared it to be “a vile pretender” which was “tolerated, but not loved.” The author lamented that pumpkin pie was just a vehicle for spices and declared that “examined in the cold glare of actual fact, the pumpkin pie becomes obviously bogus and unspeakably contemptible.”
What on earth happened? Well, for starters there is the very Northern “Yankee” associations of pumpkin pie in a state whose loyalties had been torn apart in the Civil War. In a recent essay, historian David Shields pointed to the widespread availability of canned pumpkin which was itself shipped from the north. “Canned pumpkin pie filling from the North and its distribution through southern groceries set off the woe reflex in southerners,” wrote Shields. Pumpkin pie and its Southern counterpart the sweet potato pie became symbolic. The perceived replacement of the latter by the former aroused anxieties about fading traditions and culture.
1899 ad for a Thanksgiving sale
Both pies have lived on, although the argument for pumpkin pie as a spice delivery system has been given new life by the raging fad of using those spices in other products. Here again, the backlash is disproportionate. Most of the spices used in pumpkin pie have been present in sweet and savory dishes since time immemorial. A bite of ‘pumpkin spice’ beef a la mode wouldn’t make Mary Randolph furrow her brow one bit.
I confess to being a one-time pumpkin pie detractor, but this recipe actually changed my mind. This pie was creamy and excellent. There could be a few explanations for this. 1: I used butternut squashes from my CSA so maybe they’re superior, 2: I cooked them in a certain wildly-popular pressure-cooking kitchen appliance, 3: Maybe my pie preferences were an insecure affectation all along.
Enoch Pratt Free Library
I got the recipe from a book called “Grannie’s Goodies from Somerset County,” compiled in 1970 by the residents of the Alice B. Tawes nursing home in Crisfield. Alice B. Tawes was the mother of Governor J. Millard Tawes. According to the Baltimore Sun, “the story goes that the home’s director was tired of residents’ complaints about the food, so he asked them to submit a favorite recipe to be cooked and served at the home.”
I traced this particular recipe, almost word-for-word, back to “Buckeye Cookery,” a classic community cookbook compiled in the 1870s by the First Congregational Church in Ohio.
Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday during the middle of the Civil War (1863). In addition to reflecting on our agricultural abundance, he suggested that citizens pray for “the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation.”
Despite these solemn origins, the traditions of festivities and sports on Thanksgiving date back equally as far – whether it was clothing sales, shooting contests, or the football games that the Baltimore Sun proclaimed in 1903 to be “passing away as a Thanksgiving pastime.” The “gridiron sport” remains as much a part of Thanksgiving as ever, 125 years later, as does the pumpkin pie. The “vile pretender” is here to stay.
Recipe:
“Stew the squash or pumpkin till very dry and press through a colander; to each pint should be added 1 tablespoon butter. Beat in while warm 1 cup brown sugar or molasses; a little salt, 1 tablespoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ginger and ½ teaspoon soda. A little allspice may be added but it darkens the pies. Roll a few crackers very fine and add a handful to the batter or thicken with 2 tablespoons flour or 1 of cornstarch. As the thickening property of pumpkin varies, some judgment must be used in adding milk.”
From The Buckeye Cookbook via “Grannie’s Goodies from Somerset County”
Adaptation:
2 Pints pumpkin or squash (about one of the squashes pictured)
2 Tablespoons butter
2 Cups brown sugar
1.5 tsp salt
2 Tablespoons cinnamon
2 Teaspoons ginger
1 Teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon allspice
4 Tb flour
¼ cup evaporated milk
Peel squash and cook until soft. Drain well. Mash and stir in butter, sugar, soda, and spices. Stir in milk. This mixture can be stored overnight (I did). Mix in flour and pour in pie shell just before baking. 425° for about 40 minutes or until pie is no longer “jiggly.” Serve with whipped cream.
We had some crabs with friends and had a few leftovers. What a crisis! So many options.
I usually have a weird hangup about combining crab-meat with cheese… it seems disrespectful or something. A few weeks ago we went to Gertrudes and they served some crab up on an English muffin with some melted cheese. Who am I to disagree with John Shields? It was pretty tasty.
Furthermore, who am I to disagree with Helen Avalynne Tawes aka Mrs. J. Millard Tawes – Crisfield native and first lady of Maryland from 1959-1967.
Until very recently, Tawes remained a big name in Maryland, from Frostburg to Princess Anne. That is slowly fading but Crisfield will surely maintain its shrines to J. Millard Tawes for years to come..
Helen Tawes cooking terrapin, ca. 1960. Maryland State Archives
Mrs. Tawes beams with pride and appreciation for the Eastern Shore in the introduction to her 1964 cookbook “My Favorite Maryland Recipes.”
She also says, in her own words:
“Since I love to cook, and, above all things, love my State’s characteristic cookery… I set about experimenting. I wanted to see if the traditional Maryland deliciousness could be preserved with modern methods… I helped [my husband] in his campaigning every way I could, but, when I had time, I worked on my own project – in my kitchen. The result was that, to my astonishment, I produced what politically experienced people have called a ‘piece of campaign literature.’
It was a cookbook, nothing more.”
Whether the book changed the course of an election I could not say, but the book stands today, in all its reprints, among the canon of Maryland cookbooks.
Mrs. Tawes and artist Stanislav Rembski with portraits of Mrs. McKeldin
and Mrs. Tawes, 1966.
Eleven years after her 1989 passing, the Baltimore Sun gushed:
Known as Lou to close friends, she studied music at the Peabody
Conservatory in Mount Vernon Place and later sang on a Salisbury radio
station. And while living in the governor’s mansion, she wasn’t the
least bit shy about playing an electric organ, which prompted the
governor to quip, “She’s got more nerve than a jackrabbit.”
While
music may have had a place in her heart, it was in her kitchen,
surrounded by black iron frying pans and a larder overflowing with the
bounty of the Chesapeake Bay country, that Tawes truly excelled. She
exulted in old-time, stick-to-the-ribs 19th-century fare while avoiding
what she called “fancy seasonings.” – Her crab cakes were renowned 7/22/2000
And so, I chose her decadent recipe for “Crab Burgers,” essentially crab salad with cheese on a burger bun. Being that she was a mid-century lady, I will forgive her use of Miracle Whip – mayonnaise worked just fine for me, however. The 1995 version of “Maryland Seafood Cookbook I” included a variation under the moniker “Crisfield Crab-Burgers”, using mayonnaise, “cubes of mild cheese” within the salad, and Parmesan on top.
crab hand
I halved this recipe to accommodate my quantity of crab-meat
Recipe:
1 Lb crab meat
.75 Cup celery
2 Tablespoon finely grated onion
2 Tablespoon green pepper
1 Cup medium-Sharp Cheddar
1 Cup mayonnaise
2 Teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 Teaspoons hot sauce
.75 Teaspoon salt
hamburger rolls
Mix all ingredients before adding crab meat, gently folding in the meat to keep lumps together. Cut hamburger rolls in half, butter lightly and toast with the buttered side up. (This forms a crisp surface so that mixture will not be absorbed in the bun.) Spread crab mixture on the bun; sprinkle with shredded cheese. Place under broiler for 3 to 5 minutes until browned and bubbly. Serve hot, immediately.
Recipe adapted from “My Favorite Maryland Recipes” by Mrs. J. Millard Tawes
