Crab Soup

Tomato and lemon augment the flavor of crab soup

Open some small uncooked crabs, and remove the deadman's fingers and sandbags. Cut the crabs in two, parboil and extract the meat from the claws, and remove the fat from the back of the shells. Place some ripe tomatoes in a basin, scald and skin them, and squeeze the pulp through a colander, keeping back the seeds. Pour boiling water over the seeds and juice of the tomatoes and strain. Put in a saucepan one clove of garlic, one onion, one tablespoonful of butter, and two tablespoonfuls of lard, and the pulp of the tomatoes and let it stew a short time. Put the meat from the claws of the crab, and lastly the fat into the soup, season with sweet marjoram, parsley, lemon, salt, and black and red pepper. Pour in the water in which the seeds were scalded, simmer for one hour and thicken with breadcrumbs.