A Recipe from Betty Crocker’s Dinner-in-a-Dish Cookbook (1965)
About the Recipe
The other day, my local grocery store had fancy canned crab on sale. The kind of canned crab that you get in the fish section, not the canned section. My original plan was to make crab cakes, one of my son’s favorite dinners. But then, I was paging through this lovely cookbook and, well – sometimes the recipes guide the ingredients, and sometimes the ingredients guide the recipe.
This recipe creates a creamy and delicious casserole version of a crab cake. It’s a little mid-century nonsense (you can’t ignore the chopped hard-boiled egg). It’s a little heavy on the cholesterol clogging (so creamy). Wow, was it delicious.
A few quick notes on this one:
- Use high quality crab meat. Do it. Stretch the budget a little and get the good stuff. Or don’t! I’m actually a big fan of canned crab, especially out of season.
- I only used about half the bread crumb topping, and it was still way too much. Next time, I’ll probably use crushed Ritz crackers tossed in butter instead of a plain crumb.
- The canned carrots were surprisingly good. You could definitely steam your own and they would work just fine. Either way, they need to be cooked before they get folded in.
- You’re making a roux for this dish so please (PLEASE!), set your mise-en-place. This dish comes together quickly and having everything close at hand and ready to go is so important.
Bonus tip in my video here:
About the book
I love this cookbook so much. A friend of mine recently gave me a few boxes full of old books that she was cleaning out. A copy of this one was near the top of one of the boxes. I handed it back to her and said, “Keep this. It’s a great one.” The recipes are always good. The illustrations are just wonderful.
The Recipe!
Ingredients:
1/4 cup butter or margarine
2 T flour
1 cup light cream
1 t prepared mustard
1/2 t salt
1/4 t pepper
1/4 t mace
1 T lemon juice
1 can (1 lb.) sliced carrots, drained
2 cans (7.5 oz. each) crabmeat, drained and cartilage removed
2 hard-cooked eggs, finely chopped
2 cups soft bread crumbs
2 T butter, melted
Lemon wedges
Directions:
Heat oven to 350*F. Melt butter in heavy saucepan; stir in flour. Cook over low heat, stirring until mixture is smooth and bubbly. Remove from heat.
Stir in cream; heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil 1 min.
Gently fold in seasonings, carrots, crabmeat, and eggs. Pour mixture into 1 1/2-qt. casserole. Toss breadcrumbs with butter; sprinkle over top.
Bake uncovered 45 min., or until bubbly. Serve with lemon wedges. 4 to 6 servings.
Cooking Vintage 