This section is from the book "Cookery From Experience", by Sara T. Paul. Also available from Amazon: Cookery From Experience.
Boil the crabs about ten or fifteen minutes. When cold, extract the meat, cut it in small pieces, season with cayenne pepper and salt, moisten with a little cream, butter the upper shells of the crabs, fill with the meat, cover the tops thickly with bread crumbs, sprinkle a little pepper and salt over them, and lay on the top of each one a piece of butter nearly as large as a walnut, and brown them in a hot oven. They will take about fifteen minutes.
Take out the sand-bags, trim the spongy parts from the sides and legs, melt in a stew-pan sufficient butter and lard mixed to float them, when boiling hot drop in the crabs and fry a light •Drown, sprinkle a little pepper and salt over them and serve.
Dip them in beaten yolks of egg, roll them in cracker dust which you have seasoned with pepper and salt, and fry them in boiling lard, sufficient to cover them; when brown they are done.
 
Continue to: