The World's Largest Fishcake.
Sort of leaves a bad taste in the mouth, doesn't it?
"Hey, we don't make fish cakes. We make crab cakes. But I'll take it for now until I can convince them to call it a crab cake," says Jim Cupp, regional sales manager for Handy International and the chief architect of the world's largest crab cake.
After more than a year of waiting, Handy International, the Crisfield seafood-processing company, is the proud co-owner of a Guinness World Records' certificate that finally designates a Maryland-Delaware culinary creation to be the largest crab - eh, fish - cake in the history of such endeavors. Stop the presses and pass the Old Bay.
And it's about time, by the way. The honor took a lot longer to make than the crab cake itself. But genius often has to wait to take its rightful place among, in this case, the likes of the world's largest omelette, slab of fudge, stir-fry and tiramisu.
The story of the Great Crab Cake begins in October 2006 at the Diamond State BBQ Championship held at the Dover Downs Hotel & Casino in Delaware. Cooked up by Dover Downs, the idea was to make the world's largest crab cake because, well, it had never been done and it was National Seafood Week, after all. The communal meal would call for the usual ingredients, an unusual cooking apparatus and a statewide appetite.
Cupp, a man on a promotional mission, went to work on the project. Days before the Oct. 21 event at Dover Downs, Cupp oversaw two, 235-pound crab cake tests conducted at Handy's Crisfield plant. The colossal cakes passed the taste test.
It was go time. For the Dover Downs event, Cupp built a $10,000, three-foot rotisserie pan to hold the recipe, which required 152 pounds of crab- meat plus breadcrumbs, mayonnaise, onions and pasteurized eggs. Cupp joined forces with Dover's hotel chef, Fred Bohn, and together they cooked the 235-pound crab cake over an open flame for a mere nine hours (originally 236 pounds, the crab cake lost a pound in cooking shrinkage).
In order to follow Guinness' rules for authenticity, the event was videotaped, and Delaware's health department was on hand to certify cleanliness and edibility.
The flattened disk - resembling more of a mutant quiche - finally emerged from what could be described as an unappetizing industrial pan. Would the crab cake be dry as toast? Would it besmirch the proud name of crab cakes everywhere?
