Charleston’s Richest Soup, From the Black Cooks Who Made It Famous
She crab soup is a Lowcountry institution: butter, milk, heavy cream, three cups of lump crabmeat, and a pour of dry Madeira waiting in the bottom of the bowl. The “she” is the female crab, whose roe once gave the soup its color and its richness. Crumbled boiled egg yolk stands in for it here.
The dish is tied closely to William Deas, the Black cook and butler in the Charleston household of Mayor Robert Goodwyn Rhett, who is widely credited with enriching a plain crab soup with roe for a presidential visit in the early 1900s. However the story is told, the soup belongs to the Gullah Geechee kitchens of the South Carolina coast. This version serves six.
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 green onion, chopped
- 1 stalk celery, chopped
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 1 quart milk
- 2 cups heavy cream
- Dash of hot sauce
- White pepper and salt, to taste
- 1/3 cup dry Madeira
- 3 cups lump crabmeat
- Crumbled yolks of 2 boiled eggs
- 1/2 cup heavy cream, whipped
- Paprika, for serving
Makes: 6 servings
Step-by-Step Instructions
- In a heavy saucepan, melt the butter. Add the green onion and celery and cook until the onion is soft.
- Stir in the flour.
- Add the milk and the 2 cups of heavy cream and bring to a boil, stirring constantly.
- Remove from the heat and let it cool a little, then add the crabmeat and the crumbled egg yolks.
- Season with salt, white pepper, and hot sauce.
- Put a small amount of Madeira in each bowl, then add the soup.
- Top each bowl with the whipped cream and a sprinkle of paprika.
Pro Tips & Suggestions
- Stir without stopping once the milk and cream go in. This soup scorches on the bottom of the pan faster than you would think.
- The Madeira goes in the bowl, not the pot. That keeps the wine sharp instead of cooking it flat.
- The boiled egg yolk is the roe substitute. Crab roe is hard to buy and restricted in some states, and the yolk does the same job.
- Add the crabmeat off the heat so the lumps stay whole.
- Serve it in cups, not dinner bowls. It is rich enough that a small portion is the right portion.
About the Creator
The Gullah Geechee are descendants of West and Central Africans enslaved on the rice, indigo, and sea island cotton plantations of the coastal Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. Relative isolation on the sea islands preserved a distinct language and a distinct kitchen: rice at the center, seafood pulled from the creeks, and one-pot cooking that carries West African technique straight through. Congress designated the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor in 2006.
William Deas cooked in Charleston in the early twentieth century and is the name most often attached to she crab soup’s rise from a plain crab stew to the dish the city is known for. Like a lot of Black cooks of that era, his name reached print long after his food did.
Where to Find This Recipe
This recipe was retyped from a handwritten recipe card illustrated with a watercolor portrait of a Gullah cook.
The clipping surfaced through the vintage recipe archive kept by @therealblackhistorian.