Do foreigners eat crabs?

Let's take this opportunity to talk about the things that Americans eat crabs. There was a rumor on the Internet that "Europeans and Americans don't eat crabs", and the Bible was quoted as saying that westerners thought that "all reptiles that walk on their bellies or four feet are disgusting and filthy". This is obviously incorrect. According to available data, in the distant times when the center of European civilization was located on the Mediterranean coast, the ancient Greeks and Romans recorded crabs as crustacean aquatic animals, but as the food historian Andrew Dalby said, "They don't seem to eat crabs yet." However, it wasn't long before the Romans ruled the island of Great Britain, and they began to eat crabs. In the book "Food and Drink in Britain: from the stone age to the 19th century", historian Anne Wilson said: "The Romans who arrived in Britain fell in love with the local seafood, so the British could buy seafood at a good price in the market, including crabs and lobsters caught offshore." In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, fish traders began to move around trade associations. At this time, there were many kinds of seafood available in the market, and eating crab meat became the fashion of coastal people.

The rumor that Europeans and Americans don't eat crabs is broken in the face of sufficient evidence. They not only eat crabs, but also have a long tradition of eating crabs. Nowadays, the United States has become one of the largest consumers of crabs in the world. So how do Americans usually eat crabs? We might as well go back to the seafood restaurant where Drysdale works mentioned above and start with their menu.

Crab Cakes

The most expensive starter on the menu is a "three-piece set" for two people: fried squid (Calamari Fritti), Bacon Wrapped Scallops and crab cakes. This last crab patty is the most common way to eat crab meat in America. In 166, Robert May, a British chef, recorded in detail the early practice of crab patties in his book The Compromised T Cook: or The Art and Mystery of Cooking: "First, take crab meat out of crab legs and shells and cook it in boiling water. Then, put the crab meat together with the broken bread, almond paste, nutmeg, salt, egg yolk, flour and butter and stir well for later use. Secondly, mix wine vinegar and butter (or orange juice and nutmeg crumbs) with a little crab meat to make a sauce, heat it slightly and put it on a clean plate for later use. Thirdly, fry the batter in hot oil with a spoonful at a time. Finally, put the fried crab patties on a plate with sauce, serve with peeled oranges and sprinkle with fried coriander around. " A crab patty is done like this.

The Compromised T Cook: or the art and mystery of cooking

In 1792, Richard Briggs published a cookbook called The New Art of Cooking Accommodation to Present Practice. The method of crab patties recorded in the book is almost the same as that of Robert May, only a few auxiliary materials are adjusted, such as pepper and mustard added to the new method, and the preparation method of sauce is simpler than before. This book was first published in Philadelphia, so it is not difficult to speculate that the British who first arrived in the United States still kept the practice of crab patties in the early colonial period. The practice recorded by Briggs continued until 1932, when Frederick Stieff wrote Eat, Drink &; Be merry in Maryland: an anthology from a great tradition) still follows the practice of a century and a half ago. However, in this book, Steve also recorded another method of crab patties from Baltimore, Maryland. The most significant difference is that there is an extra glass of milk and a lot of whipped cream in the ingredients.

The New Art of Cooking to Present Practice

Eat, Drink &; Be merry in Maryland: an anthology from a great tradition)

It may be because with the development of industrial revolution and commodity economy, especially the commercial application of pasteurization, the production and sales of canned milk and fresh cream soared from the end of the 19th century to before the Second World War, and they became part of the daily consumption of urban residents. During this period, milk and cream appeared in many foods, and crab patties were one of them. The development of crab patties today, the practices of various restaurants are similar, and there are many loyal fans everywhere. For centuries, this crab meat food, which originated in Britain and was popular in the United States, has undergone little change, and has also undergone a gradual spread process from east to west-first arrived in New England with British colonists, then spread to surrounding areas such as Maryland, and then spread to the south and west coast with the westward movement and the gold rush in the west.

in addition to crab patties as appetizers, the restaurant where Drysdale works also has a classic staple food with crab meat, that is, Cioppino. If the stew in the northeast of China is a hodgepodge of vegetarian dishes, the Italian seafood soup is a hodgepodge of seafood. Italian seafood soup is usually based on thick tomato stock. Crabs, shrimps, scallops, mussels, oysters, squid and fresh marine fish are poured into the pot and stewed until they are cooked but not old. Diners who like this dish generally love the rich flavor set off by the soup, which is also the difficulty in selecting materials and cooking. If you are not careful, the taste of tomatoes will have the side effect of usurping the host's role. Of course, other people who like this dish care about its rich seafood categories, because as many as six or seven kinds of seafood can be tasted in one staple food. No wonder this restaurant calls their Italian seafood soup "Lazy Man's Cioppino"!

in fact, this seafood staple food that looks like Italian food is an Italian－American Cuisine that combines various Italian seafood soup practices, and this restaurant is located in North Beach, the birthplace of this dish. In the late 19th century, newly arrived Italian fishermen stewed different kinds of seafood in a pot according to the traditional Italian method for convenience. Unexpectedly, such a "fisherman's dish" and "dock dish" have now become the business cards of American seafood restaurants, and even been imitated and improved by some high-end restaurants. Also influenced by immigrants, crab Rangoon, another American dish made of crab meat, is much more common. It is just a dumpling-shaped fried food made of crab meat, cheese, cream and chopped green onion. Interestingly, although the name of Fried Crab Horn contains the word "Rangoon", and it is said that it was inspired by a Burmese dish, this dish is regarded as a Chinese－American Cuisine because it looks like jiaozi. More interestingly, it is said that this dish was originally invented by a Polynesian restaurant in the 195s, which at one time made people think of hula dancing in the Tiki culture of Hawaii from the winding outline of fried crab horns.

For various reasons, it is not surprising that Americans stay away from crab roe, which is popular in China. The best example of cultural conflict is the rumor that the US government will ban crab roe on the grounds that the toxic substances are too high. Such rumors have aroused the strong reaction of Chinese people who love crabs for a time. In American catering culture, crab occupies a special position, and only crab meat is used as raw material to satisfy different types of dishes. It is difficult for us to see the shadow of crabs from crab cakes and crab dip, and it is also difficult to escape from our traditional understanding of food. Perhaps China diners from different cultures will regard crab cakes like potato cakes and crab cakes like creamy lasagna as fleeting things. Americans treat crabs, just like other ingredients, without aesthetic cultural attributes. On the contrary, in China, there is an old saying about eating crabs: "September is full of navel and October is sharp, and it is a day of drinking chrysanthemums with pincers." It is said that it is a good Guang Chen to eat crabs and enjoy chrysanthemums in September every year, and it is very happy to eat female crabs with round navel in September and male crabs with pointed navel in October. After a lifetime of generations of scholars, they invented ways to eat crabs, such as stuffed crabs and washed crabs, and eating crabs became an interesting thing. In this way, eating is not the main purpose of eating crabs.