“Through the years, Maryland whiskey has become almost as renowned as Maryland fried chicken.” – Maryland: A Guide to the Old Line State, Writers’ Program of the Works Progress Administration, 1940
In July 1945, war correspondent Ollie Stewart wrote to the Afro American of the frenzied scene in Berlin as American soldiers had raided Hitler’s “medal room” for souvenirs while the Russians looked on, laughing. “We must have looked silly as hell,” the journalist remarked.
Stewart left Berlin for Paris, where he’d just missed a banquet for the leaders of the Red Cross. The seven-course feast was served by an all-black staff – a new and novel experience for the Frenchmen. Although Stewart was at a loss to recall the full menu, owing to “so much French in the darn thing,” one dish stood out as “the big noise”: “Poulet frit Maryland.”
According to Stewart, the dish set a new standard for Parisian chefs. Some of them asked him “where is this place, Maryland?” The Afro-American shared the anecdote under the headline: “Maryland Gains Fame.”
Of all of the forgotten Maryland recipes, Maryland Fried Chicken may be the most misunderstood. It may even be impossible to understand. Since its nebulous inception, there has been little agreement on just what constitutes “Maryland Fried Chicken,” also known as “Fried Chicken, Maryland Style,” or sometimes “Chicken a la Maryland.” See? There isn’t even agreement on what to call it.
A lot has changed since the New York Times ran an article on Southern Maryland Stuffed Ham in 1982. That article described stuffed ham as a curious, acquired taste. “Occasionally one hears of a newcomer – a visitor, even – whose sensitive palate quivers with delight at the first piquant bite,” wrote the article’s author, Mary Z. Gray. “For those who can take it, the dish is especially savored because it is available only in southern Maryland.”
Nowadays, we live in an age of commodification and a collectors’ mentality about foods to try. The nebulous concept of ‘authenticity’ offers an alluring selling point to many diners. The comments on the Times’ March 2018 article about stuffed ham generally fall into two categories: fond reminisces or “I gotta try this!”
I haven’t had stuffed ham since I finished the final frozen remains of last year’s attempt. I’m pretty sure I swore off the process of ever making stuffed ham again, but that damned Times article just made the temptation too much to bear.
Originally, I had intended to work on a variation of former City Paper food writer Henry Hong’s “Fake Ass Stuffed Ham.” Hong is one of the few brave souls who have attempted to adapt the process to something a little more practical. Hong’s recipe called for a Boston Butt which is brined overnight before being rolled up with the requisite stuffings.
With a week until Easter, I decided I’d brine the ham with pink curing salt for a week for a flavor more similar to the Manger Packing Corporation’s hams (which contain nitrite).
This necessitated that I buy the meat that very day. I ended up leaving several grocery stores and a butcher shop empty-handed before finally catching a ride to Giant. Giant happened to have fresh hams so I ended up dropping the whole Boston Butt thing and going with a ham. From there I abandoned any attempt to make this easy.
Kind of makes this entire post pointless, doesn’t it?
Some key differences from last time:
I cut off all that tough skin from the ham. None of my recipes specify to do that for some reason (perhaps it should be obvious?) but some of the recipes online do, and it was an improvement. I may throw the cut-away parts in some scrapple or something.
This ham brined for a week in my fridge. I’d like to try it again and give it a full month.
I blanched the greens and chopped them in a food processor instead of hand-chopping. Definitely the way to go! I also used the mini-chopper to process a lot of black and red pepper.
Last but not least…. I de-boned the ham. After watching some youtube videos I took a deep breath and gave it a try. Not the most elegant operation, but I was able to use much more stuffing.
I cut some slits outward from the “bone hole,” and then I cut some additional outer slits in the spaces between them. The whole time, I recalled this quote from Rob Kasper’s article on Stuffed Ham in the Baltimore Sun in 1988:
“Ham Bone advocates cook the ham with the bone still in it. They argue that the bone gives flavor and posture to a stuffed ham. Anti-bone forces contend that with the bone removed, the ham is easier to slice and ‘you can fill up the bone-hole with more stuffing.’”
Almost lyrical.
Stuffed Ham Recipes, Southern Heritage Cookbook Library
As I labored away at the incisions, I thought of the point of the blog itself… oftentimes I simply want to taste food that I wouldn’t otherwise. Hearth cooks like Michael Twitty perform their cooking processes as a way of channeling lost voices of the past. Is it possible to channel the living?
I do know that every time I make the ham I think of kindly Bertha Hunt and her connection with her mother… the rightful pride imbued in this labor-intensive tradition. My own mother taught me the basics of carpentry, and even as I acquire new skills I am building on what I learned from her.
While engaged in the act of cooking other peoples’ recipes, I often imagine the ways in which a more experienced person would handle the process. Perhaps a stuffed ham pro would maneuver the ham expertly, making swift cuts in all the right places. I think about this as I wrangle and struggle with this ridiculous big piece of meat.
Is stuffed ham in any danger of extinction? Perhaps not. But it could be in danger of homogenization, as the home-ham-makers wane, and customers seek out the most “authentic” of hams. In a fascinating article in the Guardian about the British obsession with sandwiches, author Sam Knight interviewed an employee of a large sandwich producer:
“Twenty thousand people a day used to make a ham and cheese sandwich,” said Patrick Crease, a product development manager. “Now this is their ham and cheese sandwich.” I don’t know whether he meant to, but he made this sound somehow profound and irreversible. “There are 20,000 variants that don’t exist anymore.”
I ended this year’s ham-making not by swearing it off but by swearing to make it again, with my excessive red pepper, whatever greens the farmer’s market has to offer, and unskilled hands. Next year I plan to drag some family in on the act.
Take enough water to cover your ham in its vessel and heat the water with a ton of salt & curing salt, plus maybe ½ cup of brown sugar, or white sugar + a little molasses, peppercorns if you want. Basically just search the internet and figure out how much salt you need to keep the ham safe. Maybe ask a butcher or something.
Also ask them if you should remove the tough skin before or after brining. When they tell you, email me please.
If you manage to brine the ham for a month then you should probably soak it in some fresh water before using… old recipes do this a lot. Since mine went for a week and then I cut off the outside I didn’t bother.
Clean up all your greens and roughly chop, then blanch them in salted water in batches, drying VERY well. Process the greens and celery in food processor until chopped.
Grind pepper and red peppers (I used about…. 12 hot pepper pods). Mix all seasonings with greens and green onions.
Cut slits to your preference. I’m officially on team “bone hole” personally. Like…. you could even boil the bone in the pot if you care about the flavor. Stuff the ham and place in a pillowcase or an old clean t-shirt, pat with all the remaining greens and tie it tight.
Boil for 15 minutes per pound (or until internal temp is over 160 degrees… let it go a little beyond that this isn’t some pork roast) then allow the ham to cool in the water before removing to slice and serve.
Recipe adapted from BGE Cookbook “Maryland Classics,” the Southern Heritage Cookbook Library’s “All Pork” and “Family Gatherings” & “300 Years of Black Cooking in St. Mary’s County”
If there were definitive proof that fudge was invented in Baltimore, we’d never hear the end of it. Tourists would be encouraged to eat fudge-dipped crabcakes or whatever, and all the billboards in the city would be like “Sprint is the favorite network of fudge-lovers!”
Nevertheless, there is some intriguing evidence that ties the origins of fudge to the city. This was complete news to me when I recently checked out Stella Parks’ “Bravetart: Iconic American Desserts.” I was barely home from the library before I was contacting Atomic Books to order a copy of my own.
The cookbook contains a lot of historical background essays similar to some on this blog – but unlike Old Line Plate, “Bravetart” contains recipes that are actually useful. Aside from assuaging some of my dessert hang-ups (Hint: I grew up near the Hostess outlet), I found a lot of information that will help improve my baking, and this blog by extension. What put it over the top for me though was the quality of the research. I actually gasped aloud when I read Parks’ conclusion about the origins of the Oreo brand name.
One of the recipes in the book is for “Baltimore Fudge.” After years of researching Maryland food, it’s always exciting to find new things I was completely unaware of.
A 1995 piece in the Los Angeles times by Baltimore-born writer Steven Raichlen disseminated the Baltimore origins of fudge as reported by food historian John Mariani in the “Dictionary of American Food and Drink.” “When it comes to fudge,” Raichlen wrote, “Baltimore isn’t a bad place to come from.” Of course, the Sun reprinted that article so that readers could bask in this comforting fact.
The prevailing fudge origin story centers around a Vassar student, Emelyn Hartridge, who popularized the confection on campus; it then spread to other schools. Fudge-making remained associated with women’s colleges for decades. Hartridge, it turns out, is said to have gotten the recipe from a schoolmate’s cousin in Baltimore. (That’s how recipes go, especially sweet ones.)
Harrisburg Pennsylvania Daily Independent, 1903
By 1903, recipes appeared in regional newspapers for “Baltimore Fudge.” The women’s magazine The Delineator in 1907 referred to “…Baltimore caramels, a confection afterwards known as ‘January Thaw’ and now called ‘fudge.’” The “January Thaw” term is a little hard to search, but it doesn’t seem to have been as prevalent in old newspapers and cookbooks as “Baltimore Fudge” or “Baltimore Caramels.” When I surveyed other 19th-century recipes, it appeared that the major difference between the “Baltimore” chocolate caramels and others was that the Baltimore recipes usually don’t contain molasses.
Chocolate was primarily consumed in beverage form in the early days of the United States, and was most popular as a breakfast. The chocolate caramels that became popular in the mid-1800s required better control of heat. I won’t get on too much of a chocolate tangent but needless to say, there was a lot going on.
Candy and confection caught on more as the price of sugar went down and the quality of cooking technology improved. Its been written that 19th-century Baltimoreans tended to eat a lot outside of the home. Sweets like fudge could be had right alongside oysters in busy downtown markets.
Baltimore Sun, 1877
Confection recipes appeared in trade magazines for hotels and the like, but confectioners also had their own trade magazines. Books like “The confectioners’ hand-book,” printed in London in 1883, offer up fascinating detail of the processes involved in 19th-century candy-making.
An 1865 book, “The Art of Confectionery,” suggested that candy making was becoming an exciting pastime for housewives:
“While the preparation of soups, joints, and gravies, is left to ruder and stronger hands, the delicate fingers of the ladies of a household are best fitted to mingle the proportions of exquisite desserts… It is absolutely necessary to the economy of the household that this art should form a part of every lady’s education. This fact is becoming generally acknowledged, and the composition of delicate confections is passing from the hands of unskilled domestics into the business and amusement of the mistress of the household.”
I definitely have rude and unskilled hands but I gave it my best.
In “Iconic American Desserts,” Parks referenced the ‘caramels’ recipe found in the “The Favorite Receipt Book and Business Directory,” an anonymous advertising cookbook printed by a ladies’ church group in Baltimore in 1884. I was able to trace that recipe back to the 2nd published Maryland cookbook “Queen of the Kitchen,” by Mrs. M.L. Tyson in 1870.
The first Maryland cookbook (1859) was by killjoy Elizabeth Ellicott Lea who was not likely to promote frivolous treats like chocolate caramels. Her only chocolate recipe is for a drinking chocolate “for the sick.” You had to be sick to get chocolate or liquor in the Lea household.
After appearing in “Queen of the Kitchen,” the chocolate caramels recipe was subsequently printed in the classic “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen,” by Mrs. B. C. Howard in 1873. Mrs. Charles H. Gibson also included it in her 1894 “Maryland and Virginia Cook Book.” In fact, that book includes SEVEN slight variations on the recipe. This made me decide that Mrs. Gibson is kind of irritating.
In the Los Angeles Times, Raichlen shared a fudge recipe from his grandmother. Although the ingredients are essentially the same, the order of operations involves dissolving the sugar before stirring in the chocolate. This recipe was reprinted in the Baltimore Sun Recipe Finder, where a reader described it as having “a smooth texture with a slight crust on the outside.” This is basically how my own fudge turned out, despite putting all the ingredients straight into the pan.
Stella Parks’ book has an updated Baltimore Fudge recipe which includes some white sugar to decrease the bitterness, as well as far more precise instructions and tips than found in the old Maryland cookbooks. In the years I’ve been doing this blog, I’ve actually grown disillusioned with famous chefs and cookbooks, but I endorse “Iconic American Desserts,”… that is, unless you work for Visit Baltimore in which case… move right along, nothing to see here.
Recipe:
1.5 Lb brown sugar
.25 Lb chocolate
1 teacup cream
.25 Lb butter
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
“Mix together and boil twenty-five minutes; stir in one tablespoonful vanilla juice before pouring out to cool.“
Recipe from “The Favorite Receipt Book and Business Directory,” Church of the Holy Comforter (Baltimore, Md.). Ladies Aid Society, 1884
“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.
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.
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.’”
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?
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.
