Hmm, hard to say, but eggs can expand in cooking and are used as leavening in some baked goods, FWIW.

Were you able to chill them after forming and before cooking? My mother’s recipe uses 1/2 cup bread crumbs, 1# crab, and 1 egg.

@lisaam, the recipe I was given did not call for chilling but that makes sense. I made them immediately before I cooked them. IIRC, the one slice of crustless bread made what appeared to be fewer than 1/2 cup of crumbs

FWIW, I chill the mixture before forming the cakes, then chill the cakes.

lisaam, maybe controversial but sounds good to me!

Eggs, especially the protein/whites, are glue. Starch is paste. A good binder is protein and starch together. I'm sure chilling helps, as the others recommend, just as it does cookies. Gives a chance tor the outside to set before the heat loosens the inside.

lisaam, that sounds delish! I would assume just a tiny amount of cream cheese otherwise when it heats it would run everywhere.

I finally dug out a recipe that was given to me at a cooking class years ago. It was crab, a bit of finely minced bell pepper, some finely minced green onion, a bit of pimento, a little mayo and a dab of mustard and one egg for a pound of crabmeat. I remember the person conducting the class pointing out that there was no bread filler, which somewhat informed my decision to only use 1 slice of bread.

Thanks, @plllog, that was answer I was looking for. So it takes a combo of egg and startch for good binding.

There are also plant gums and gels, and fibers. A lot of the depends on ratios, and the composition of that which will be bound. I start calling it ”filler” when the bread/crumbs can be seen and tasted. The binder should be between the ”ingredients”, rather than one of them. I can't say for certain about needing both starch and protein, though that works for me. To a certain extent, I think the viscous liquidity of the egg kind of activates the starch, the pastiness, of the crumbs. But even by themselves, eggwhites are awesome glue. Re the crab cakes, it may just be you skimped on quantity (volume) of binder too much, and maybe not enough got distributed to the two which fell apart. In some circumstances, mayonnaise can work as a binder. Wet bread is also a thickener and can smooth the texture.

If you decrease the amount of bread you needed to decrease the amount of egg as well. The bread soaks up the liquid in the egg and if there isn't enough bread, the liquid just makes the mixture too sloppy.

It also helps to really knead the mixture to make it bind together better.

Lump crab meat cannot be kneaded. Well, it can be, but having the large lumps of crabmeat in tact is highly desirable. It has to be handled very gently and shaped very lightly. The whole time I was folding the crabmeat into the other ingredients, I was cognizant of being careful not to break up the lumps.

The principle holds, though. You could thoroughly mix the crumbs and eggs to activate the gluiness, before the folding, but then you'd need the binder to be loose enough to distribute well. It's a trade-off depending on how much stickum you need. Since more than half held together the way you made them, I'm guessing the original proportions and method were pretty much right.

I've only made crab cakes once, a long time ago, but I've made ever so many meatballs by the same principles. My go-tos have as much minced raw carrot and onion, only casually drained (both shed water), as they do meat. I use one square matzah FP'd to crumbs per half pound meat, and three eggs per pound of meat, with approx. half a pound of (before mincing) carrots per pound of meat, and one medium sized onion (about baseball size or a bit bigger) per pound of meat. And a huge handful of dry parsley, but I don't think it has an effect on the binding, along with the seasoning. It all goes in a big wide bowl, and I don't arrage the ingredients or pre-mix the eggs and crumbs. I handle the mix lightly and roll the balls lightly to seal without compressing much, then brown in a frying pan or the oven, whichever seems easier at the time. The wet vegetables are anti-glue. They don't have any stickiness. The binder is the only thing keeping the balls together, whereas in a normal meatball, the meat itself wants to bind to itself, like in burgers with no binders but a little compression. My veg forward meatballs squish easily enough if roughly manhandled, but they don't fall apart.

Which is a long way of saying that you can be as delicate as you wish handling your crab cake mix, and getting the binding right, whether you make a panade (paste of milk and bread, as is traditional for meatballs), or the egg and bread version, or just put in your eggs and crumbs to marry in the mixing—or use chia gel or psyllium husks or guar gum—the binding is just something to get a feel for and do however you make it work for you.

I've been making crab cakes for many years...since junior high. (My mother has always been a shy, insecure, and hesitant cook... ) so i took over 4-5 times a year and all holidays with family. Lump crab, fresh salmon, cod, (poached) i use for cakes and croquettes. Mix wet/moist ingredients...then gently, very gently, fold in lump seafood. As mentioned, let the mixture rest, chilled. Then form cakes and rest again uncovered in the fridge. 4-6 hours at least.

I know some here use canned seafood products. Different animal. Most out of a can is mushy...like a canned tuna sandwich from a diner/deli. (heavy mayo and mush)

Lump crab, fresh poached salmon/cod, will form a nice firm flaked 'cake' without mushing.

Lump prime crab is 80$ a pound here. 45$ in my southern hometown. Fresh whole live lobster is half that now or less now so we are enjoying wild gulf shrimp rolls and lobster rolls.

-sleeve

*not at all judgemental having had a fab hot dog last week.

I may have missed it, but did you coat the cakes with crumbs or flour and let it dry out a bit before cooking them?

Pllog, I think I had the ingredients, except the crab, thoroughly mixed. I suspect cutting the amount of bread in half may have been the culprit. And not chilling them.

Sleeve, yes, lump crabmeat is quite expensive here, too ($40-$50/lb). So expensive that I wanted to preserve the lumpiness! (P.S. I am a big lover of hot dogs, too! And I like them dressed every which way…but maybe not Chicago style.)

Carol, I did not coat the crab cakes with anything. I made the cakes, put them on a cookie sheet, and they went into the oven almost immediately. When I make salmon patties, I coat them with cornmeal and fry them.

I think what I’ve learned for next time is make the crab cake mixture using the 2 slices of bread, chill it. Form the patties, chill them. Then bake them.

I've been known to add a little rice flour and beaten egg ... mixed together. Chilling is key. Sometimes, rolled in panko before frying.

I came across this unique method for keeping crab cakes together. He also doesn't use bread crumbs as filler. I wouldn't spice it like he does but he is a New Orleans chef.

https://www.gopresto.com/videos/light-and-tasty-crab-cakes-with-chef-kevin-belton

Thanks for that link, @Eileen! Interesting technique. I may have to give that a try!

Just a personal preference, but I don’t love the appearance of the crab cakes in that video. More gray than golden, and the squared-off and “raw” sides looks odd with the panko’d flat top. The multiple freezing stints, and cooking while still wrapped with aluminum foil, are interesting tricks.

Thinking about this, I guess going light on the binder is to allow a cake that has a purely “crab“ interior, rather than a crab + bread + egg interior?

In that case, how about a tempura process applied to a part-frozen formed cake of lump crab + s&p/herb/spice + no binder at all. Rely on the part-freezing to hold the cake together long enough to be dipped in the batter and then deep fried.

This is just “thought cooking”, I’ve not tried it. Been a while since we made tempura, hmmmm.

I don't want to eat bread crumbs--I want crab! He says that mayo acts as the binder along with the egg. I don't know why some cooks overseason crab cakes. The store where I buy freshly-made crab cakes adds bell peppers and they are too strong for crab.

Here's another recipe to try where she bakes the cakes. You could wrap in foil to hold the shape and bake them. You wouldn't have to flip them, which is where mine fall apart.

https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/maryland-crab-cakes/

John, I don’t fry much of anything unless I can do it on the side burner on the grill. Although I like fried food, particularly that fried in a tempura batter, I don’t like cleaning up the mess or getting the smell out of my house.

I had a friend who used to bring me crab cakes from the coast (he had a plug-in car freezer 😳). Those crab cakes were perfect. Mostly crab, no discernible filler, and perfectly seasoned. Unfortunately, he wrapped up his business on the coast and there went my crab cake pipeline!

Eileen, mine fall apart when flipped too!

The binder is supposed to keep them together in flipping.

If you can see, feel or taste the binder, there's too much.

One reason why people make crab cakes with little stands of crab you can't really sink your teeth into is that there's a lot of that stuff when you break down a crab, and it's perfectly good, tasty crab meat, but inelegant to eat or serve. There's only so much bisque or chowder to put it in, That leaves ”salad” (mayo and crunchies), salad (greens+), ”crab butter” on toast, and crab cakes. Being a bit facetious, but crab cakes is the big winner in the what's for dinner category. And the kicker is it's a lot easier to bind if you have the objectionably small scraps. Of course, you can also make your big lumps into little scraps by over handling. :)

I've had professionally made, big crab cakes with large pieces of crab, crusted like a croquette, but thickly, and presumably deep fried. They're beautifully shaped and uniform, as much as handmade food can be, and fall apart once they're opened. I presume the binder was mostly that thick crust, possibly because binding the big lumps without using too much glue and paste, is really hard!

I looked around a little and found a similar thread in a chef's forum. Nothing said that hasn't been said here, leaning to more egg/mayo, less crumbs. Two novel binders: Raw shrimp (much less expensive than crab), in the FP (eggwhite optional) and processed into glue (that's all protein). The other was rice krispies soaked in milk then the liquid squeezed out, leaving paste. This last was considered the best by the poster but “Toasted rice cereal (rice, sugar, salt, malt flavor), corn syrup, fructose, vegetable oil (soybean and palm oil with TBHQ for freshness), sugar, corn syrup solids. Contains 2% or less of vegetable glycerin, dextrose, gelatin, natural and artificial flavors (contains milk), salt, DATEM, acetylated monoglycerides, soy lecithin, BHT for freshness.”

I like Rice Krispies…in bowl with milk or in a bar with marshmallows, but in my crab cakes? I don’t think so. I find the raw shrimp made into glue intriguing and horrifying and just plain gross all at the same time. Why not do the same with some of the less desirable bits of crab, though?

I wish crab meat weren’t so expensive. I’d like to do a lot of experimenting.

These were professional chefs, so I assume the why not make protein glue out of crab scraps had to do with cost and scale. For experimenting you could cut up chicken into similar sizes. Maybe do a buttermilk soak or a brine to make the chicken moister and less dense. if it's not going to work on chicken, it's not going to work on crab. Once you hae it down for chicken is soon enough to see if the same thing works for the $$ crab.

Shrimp as a binder is very interesting. I wonder if this is why the typical shao mai is pork and shrimp? I guess for maximum gluiness you'd food process the shrimp to a paste?

Yes. The chef who said it meant process to paste, with possible reinforcement of eggwhite.

Look what was in my email box today! Once Upon a Chef’s recipe for Maryland Crab Cakes! I may have to give it a try. I find her recipes to be reliable. For binder, she uses 1/2 cup of panko and 2 eggs plus 2.5 Tblsp of mayo.