Island She-Crab Soup w/ Fresh Marjoram

My 100th post since Grandpa's Home Cooking was launched March 12, 2010.

♫ If your fond of sand dunes and salty air, quaint little villages here and there♫  ... then you may love Island She-Crab Soup. Try topping it with chopped fresh marjoram. Nancy went out to our herb patch on a cold January night and picked and chopped some fresh marjoram for our soup. Ooh, oh, oh, is that a nice flavor to lift an already great soup up a notch. If you make this soup in the summer, try chopped marigold leaves.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup crab meat, drained and flaked*
• 2 cans cream of celery soup
• 3 cups milk
• 1 cup half and half
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 boiled eggs, chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning
• 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4th teaspoon garlic salt
• 1/4th teaspoon white pepper
• 1/4th cup of good dry sherry
• Chopped fresh marjoram or marigold leaves

*Ask the fishmonger about crab meat options. For this supper, Nancy got the soup started while I sat at a table and carefully picked the crab meat out of leftover Dungenous crab, added it to the pot, added the seasonings, and served the table. You can also use fresh Blue crab, Snow crab leg, Alaskan king crab leg, or even canned crab meat. 

Instructions:

This is easy cooking. Just combine the celery soup, milk, cream, eggs, butter, Old Bay seasoning, Worcestershire, garlic, and white pepper in a large soup pot or dutch oven. Stir the soup while bringing the mixture to a boil. Then add the crab meat and lower the heat to medium. Stir the soup until heated through. Then stir in the sherry. Ladle the soup into bowls and sprinkle the top of the soup with chopped fresh marjoram or marigold leaves. 

Here are Nancy and I pictured on our first ferry boat crossing to Ocracoke Island, NC, circa 1978.(33 years ago). We were newlyweds. I believe we got the She-Crab soup recipe from the Island Inn while we were on this trip. We would soon move to Kansas City, Missouri. A year later we returned to Chicago where we lived on the 32nd floor of a hi-rise apartment just off of Michigan Avenue. We had a nice view of the The John Hancock Center, Lake Michigan, and the Chicago Skyline. With North Carolina still on our mind, we finally moved here in 1986.