A creamy sherry-finished Chesapeake blue-crab soup, named for the female crab whose roe enriches the soup. The Virginia tea-table classic alongside peanut soup.
She-crab soup traces to coastal South Carolina (Charleston claims the original recipe) and spread up the Atlantic coast through nineteenth-century Tidewater Virginia. The dish became a Virginia tea-table staple, alongside peanut soup. The female blue crab's roe gives the broth its richness; today Chesapeake Bay regulations restrict harvesting female crabs to certain windows, so most Richmond kitchens use pasteurised crab meat without roe and finish the soup with a measured pour of dry sherry.
