Crab Cakes

These are the crab cakes from the Faidley Seafood counter in Baltimore, the best I have ever had. Under the crisp outer layer of the crab cakes, big chunks of succulent sweet crabmeat were barely held together by condiments and what I later found out were crisp crushed saltine crackers. I managed to work out this fairly close recipe, since Faidley’s would not part with the original one. Rémoulade is a condiment that kept resurfacing on my research trip all over America. It appeared in Baltimore with the crab cakes, in New Orleans with fried artichokes, as a topping for po’ boy sandwiches, and some rendition of it has even turned up as a topping for today’s Big Mac. The closest Italian traditional condiment to the rémoulade is the aglio e olio (aioli—the emulsified rendition of olive oil and garlic which is used on the Ligurian and French coast). The French-sounding name implies some French heritage, but, then, the French played a big role in the founding of America, in particular in the Louisiana Territory.