Colonial Williamsburg Crab Cake Recipe

Food Historians in Williamsburg, Virginia, Study Cooking and Recipes

Jul 1, 2009

At Colonial Williamsburg, historians preserve past practices through research and public interpretation. The cooking craft program is called Foodways.

Food tradesmen and women at Colonial Williamsburg are studying cooking skills, not necessarily learning to be great cooks, in order to preserve knowledge of our ancestors’ customs. They read inventories, lists of imported foodstuffs, and books of “receipts” or recipes to learn more about food and its preparation in the eighteenth century. Of particular interest to visitors are the foods harvested from the Chesapeake Bay. The large tidal estuary was an abundant source of fish and shellfish for settlers in the Virginia and Maryland colonies.

Colonial Williamsburg Food History Program

Food historians serve an apprenticeship in the Colonial Williamsburg Trade Program, studying foodways practices in general, and then develop a specialty to become journeyman. The apprenticeship program takes four to seven years to complete. Colonial Williamsburg now boasts foodways journeyman in specialties like chocolate making, gelatin making, butchering, vegetable preparation, and brewing.

Colonial Williamsburg, located on the Chesapeake Bay, is a wonderful place for cooking and eating. There are Chesapeake Bay crabs and oysters and three growing seasons here insure asparagus and peas in spring, abundant produce through the summer and fresh fruits in fall.

Chesapeake Bay Fisheries

Seafood consumption has changed since colonial times due to extinctions and over harvesting. In earlier times, twelve to fourteen foot-long Sturgeons were caught regularly. Oyster reefs that poked above the waterline at high tide made sailing hazardous. According to food historians, eighty-three million bushels of oysters were harvested as late as 1893, but only 100,000 bushels were harvested in 2006. The signature Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab's population numbers have plummeted.

The Historic Foodways group is working on a cookbook but since the food historians’ first job is to interpret historic practices to the public, no schedule has been set for production. One of the recipes that has been researched is this one for a dish similar to modern crab cakes.

Historic Recipe

First boil a large crab, take the meat out of the great claws, then flour and fry it; then take the meat out of the body, strain it, keep one half to be fried and the other for the sauce; mix that you fry with almond paste, grated bread, salt, nutmeg, and the yolks of eggs; dip these first in some batter; and fry them in clarified butter; then beat some butter up thick with the juice of an orange and grated nutmeg; put in the rest of the strained meat, let this be your sauce; dish the fried meat, place the legs around it, run it over with beaten butter, and lay fried parsley around it.

Modern Translation of Historic Crab Cake Recipe

Combine 3/4 pound of crab meat with almonds, bread crumbs, nutmeg, and egg. Make this into small thin cakes. Mix the wine and egg, and then add flour and stir until thick. Dip the crab cakes into the batter and fry in clarified butter. Melt the butter and fry the 1/4 pound of crab. Add juice of orange and nutmeg. Pour the sauce over crab cakes and serve hot.

The copyright of the article Colonial Williamsburg Crab Cake Recipe in Southern Fried Food is owned by Sara E. Lewis. Permission to republish Colonial Williamsburg Crab Cake Recipe in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.