Cooked crab meat is a summer-long specialty. At this season, it arrives eight to ten tons weekly in New York City, coming principally from Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. The hard crabs, known as the blues, form the basis of the industry.
Cooked crab meat comes in two forms, washed and unwashed, and therein lies that little difference in flavor. Which of the two styles you prefer is merely a matter of taste. Washing removes the “fat,” or immature roe, and gives the whiter meat. Florida supplies 50 per cent of the crab meat on the Eastern markets, and sends the washed only, for the good business reason that the average shopper prefers white meat to ivory-toned. But there is an exclusive group of crab meat epicures who, breathing the rarefied Olympic air of gourmetdom, are willing to pay a dividend for the meat unwashed, claiming it to be richer and more flavorful. Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia send the bulk of the meal unwashed. And no doubt about it, the flavor is more staunchly crab. But you may prefer the meat of greater whiteness, the more delicate taste.
Crab meat comes in three grades. The best is the lump or the back fin meat, which is the muscle that works the crab's swimming fins. Second best grade is flake meat from the body. Grade three is the meat of the nut-sweet pincers of reddish-brown color. Cooks must be a bit crazy not to pick the claw meat for their very best dishes. It is tender and in good-sized pieces. But no, it's a drug on the market.
A few years ago virtually all our crab meat came from Chesapeake Bay. Maryland packers winter-holidaying in Florida saw blue crabs going to waste, and opened branch houses down there. Soon Floridians look over and cornered the business. When cold weather hits the North, the crabs of the Chesapeake bed down to the bottom. Then Maryland stops fishing; but the Virginians carry on, dredging crabs with a scrape.
In Summer when the crabs are up and busy feeding, they are caught on trot lines, or set lines, 800 to 2,000 feet lung. A weight is fastened to each end to hold the line in position on I be ocean floor. A buoy to mark the spot is moored near the weight by a short drop line. Bait is tied to the ends of short pieces of line attached to the main line, each about one foot apart. Bait may be anything from bits of salt eel to salt fish, but it is usually tripe smelling to high heaven, a clarion dinner call to the ocean world.
Trip after trip the boat makes, lifting the line from one end to the other. Three or four barrels of crabs may be taken in a morning. Midday, and the boats return to the packing house to avoid heavy casualties. Crabs are weighed in, then dumped into iron baskets and lowered into steam retorts. Cooling follows cooking, then the crabs go to the picking rooms where shell and legs are broken off and the meat is picked out and separated into the lump and flake classes, with some packed half-and-half.
The graded meat goes to the packing rooms to be examined for shells. Now comes the washing, if washing is the method. The meal is hand-packed into one-pound perforated containers, to be kept under refrigeration.
Stir up the appetite with a crab and okra gumbo, to serve with cooked rice. Do yourself proud with a corn and crab meat chowder now that corn's ripe. Use the Baked crab meat in place of ground beef in the supper burgers. A simple thing to do is to brown crab meat lightly in butter. Combine while sauce with paprika and mustard, and stir into the meat. Heat well and serve over toast. Instead of fruit, use crab meat in an upside-down cake made with biscuit dough.
Heat blankets the world. You feel dead-alive, with no interest in dinner. Time to mix a drink using that new Chantilly ginger ale made with mineral water. It's a ginger ale from French Creek Valley of western Pennsylvania, located at the beginning of the continental waterhead, known for generations for its curative waters. From these medicinal wafers carbonated beverages have been made and shipped the world over. As early as 1900, the Saegertown products were awarded grand prices at the Paris Exposition.
The Saegertown ginger ale now selling at B. Altman's, Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street, is the natural water from private wells, bottled without storage or treatment. To this is added carbonic gas and a ginger syrup made by an old and slow process, exclusive to the manufacturer. The water carries the true ginger bouquet, which persists for hours after exposure to air, even after relentless stirring that removes all traces of the carbonation.
This Saegertown water has a definite affinity for carbonated gas and for blending with the delicate flavor of the ginger. By the same token, it is a perfect base for any mixed beverage. Make a half-and-half with grape juice. Note the instant blending of the two beverages. Join it with Rye. No need to reach for a spoon. The natural water in the ginger ale will grip the delicate flavors of the beverage—and all is as one. Extravagant talk? Make your own test. Fancy drinking, fancy price, ＄3.96 for twelve ten-ounce bottles designed from an old hobnail French pattern, bottles that belong in any setting. They look the part in hunting lodge or summer seaside cottage, or even in formal town house.
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