Lay a handful of curled parsley in the middle of a dish. Put one prawn on the top of it, and lay the others, all round, as close as you can, with the tails outside. Garnish with parsley.
Eat them with salt, cayenne, sweet oil, mustard and vinegar, mixed together as for lobsters.
Crabs are boiled in the same manner, and in serving up may be arranged like prawns.
Having boiled the crabs, extract all the meat from the shell, cut it fine, and season it to your taste with nutmeg, salt, and cayenne pepper. Add a bit of butter, some grated bread crumbs, and sufficient vinegar to moisten it. Fill the back-shells of the crab with the mixture; set it before the fire, and brown it by holding a red-hot shovel or a salamander a little above it.
Cover a large dish, with small slices of dry toast with the crust cut off. Lay on each slice a shell filled with the crab. The shell of one crab will contain the meat of two.
Having taken all the meat out of the shells, make a dressing with sweet oil, salt, cayenne pepper, mustard and vinegar, as for lobster. You may add to it some hard-boiled yolk of egg, mashed in the oil. Put the mixture into the back shells of the crabs, and serve it up. Garnish with the small claws laid nicely round.