Crab Salad in Endive Cups

Use the best quality crab you can find - jumbo lump is ideal. Pick through carefully for shells but handle gently to preserve lumps. Tarragon is the classic French herb pairing with crab. The endive cups should be chilled until serving for maximum crispness.

Crab salad in American entertaining draws on the country's rich tradition of coastal seafood culture, particularly along the Atlantic Seaboard and Gulf Coast where blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) has been harvested for centuries. Indigenous peoples of the Chesapeake region were harvesting blue crab long before European contact, and crab became central to Maryland and Virginia cuisine as settlers adopted local foodways. By the late 19th century, dressed crab salad — crab meat bound with mayonnaise or a cream-based dressing — appeared on the menus of American resort hotels and yacht clubs as a refined cold plate. Belgian endive (Cichorium intybus var. foliosum) was developed as a distinct vegetable in Belgium in the 1830s when a gardener at the Brussels Botanical Garden accidentally discovered that chicory stored in a dark cellar produced pale, tight-leafed shoots. The resulting vegetable — called witloof (white leaf) in Dutch and chicon in French — was commercially cultivated in Belgium from the 1870s and became a fixture of Belgian, French, and eventually American markets. Its slightly bitter, crisp leaves make it a natural vehicle for rich seafood salads: the bitterness cuts the richness of the crab and mayonnaise dressing, and the leaf cup requires no additional serving vessels.