Crab Imperial is a real classic Maryland dish. When you look at cookbooks that are from roughly the 1980s and before you will find dozens of recipes for it, even more than what most people think as Maryland’s signature dish, crab cakes. This book had six recipes for imperial and only four crab cake recipes!
The attributes of crab imperial isn’t up for too much debate–it’s a mild creamy crab dish, often with pimentos (or capers) more for color than anything else. It’s almost like a hot crab dip but without the cheese. I’d say most often it is mayonnaise based but some, particularly older recipes call for making a sort of roux from milk and flour as the base. You can serve it in a baking dish or you can also use it to “stuff” fish or even shrimp.
We had some steamed crabs last week and we got tired of eating and the crab house gave us a few extra so we picked them for meat instead of eating them right away. Leftover crab meat always feels so decadent! I thought it would be a good excuse to make a community recipe.
My husband chose the recipe contributed by “Butterfly” in this book because it was one of the ones that included hot sauce. It didn’t need too much tweaking. We had a little less crab than called for so some adjustment was needed for that. Our crab was very damp (commercially picked crab meat tends to be a lot drier) so he added the bread crumbs that some crab imperial recipes call for this one didn’t and used ground mustard instead of prepared mustard so he didn’t add any more liquids to the mix.
We finally got to break out the Glasbake crab shells I got at an estate auction after pining for them for a long time. They aren’t too hard to find on eBay and from sellers on Etsy in various colors and configurations. Sometimes they are labeled as “crab imperial dishes” or “deviled crab dishes”. We put them on a baking sheet for baking ease. They really are the perfect size for a modest portion of crab imperial and most importantly, super cute.
The final dish has a bit of spice from the addition of Old Bay and the hot sauce–you can vary the heat by what hot sauce you use–and a creamy, decadent texture. Just take care to fish out all those pesky shells!
Crab Imperial
Ingredients
- 1 slice white sandwich bread
- 1 jarred roasted red pepper, minced
- ⅔ cup mayonnaise
- 1 ½ tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- juice of 1/2 lemon
- Old Bay seasoning
- ½ teaspoon ground mustard
- 1 teaspoon hot sauce
- ¾ lb picked over crab meat we used leftover from steamed crabs
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350. Butter a 1 1/2 quart baking dish or 6 individual crab shell-shaped baking dishes or ramekins. Set aside
- Tear the bread into pieces, and pulse in a high-powered blender or food processor until it is in crumbs.
- Place the crumbs in a medium bowl, add the pepper, seasonings, and mayonnaise, and mix to distribute all ingredients evenly. Fold in the crab meat.
- Scrape into the prepared baking dish and sprinkle with additional Old Bay if desired. Bake for about 30 minutes or until golden brown and heated through.
Adapted and updated from “Butterfly”‘s recipe in The Chesapeake Collection: A Treasury of Recipes and Memorabilia from Maryland’s Eastern Shore 1983 that I wrote about here.
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