A tomato-based vegetable soup loaded with blue crab and Old Bay, sharp and a little spicy. It is the savoury counterpart to the city's richer cream of crab, and most rooms pour both.

Maryland crab soup is the Chesapeake's vegetable-garden soup, a tomato broth packed with corn, lima beans, potatoes and blue crab, seasoned hard with Old Bay. It evolved as a thrifty way to stretch crab through a pot of summer vegetables. Its richer sibling, cream of crab, is a smooth, sherry-laced cream soup. Many Baltimore tables order them side by side, half and half in one bowl, and Chesapeake kitchens treat both as standards.

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