If you've ever visited South Carolina, you probably saw plenty of menus that featured she-crab soup, a dish that is not often seen outside of the Palmetto State. Similar to a seafood bisque, she-crab soup is particularly big in Charleston, where it is said to have originated in the early 1900s. At its most basic, she-crab soup is made of crab meat (not to be confused with ), heavy cream, sherry, and crab roe, but the many variations and interpretations of the soup often include things like fish stock, spices, rice, and milk.
Some food historians agree that she-crab soup may be based on a Scottish dish called partan bree, which Scottish settlers would have brought to Charleston in the early 19th century. Indeed, in Gaelic, "parten" means "crab" and "bree" means "broth" or "brew." But, it's widely accepted that she-crab soup was first made at the John Rutledge House in the 1920s by William Deas, the butler and cook for Charleston's mayor at the time, Robert Goodwyn Rhett.
Rhett was hosting President Taft and asked Deas to create a special crab soup for the esteemed visit. Roe, which, of course, only comes from female crabs and which Deas decided to incorporate, was a key ingredient in the soup. It's also safe to assume that Deas would have used the crab meat from female crabs as well, which tends to be sweeter in flavor than that from male crabs.
The soup was so memorable that several of Rhett's neighbors began requesting the recipe from him. The dish's reputation spread on a m.