Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

red crab Geryon quinquedens, a deep-water crab of the W. Atlantic, from Cuba up to Nova Scotia. A fishery for this species, which had not previously been exploited, has been started in New England. The meat is good. Although the legs are thin, their meat slips out easily.

In the north of Spain a similar fishery has been begun for G. affinis, the corresponding species of the E. Atlantic. Normal weights of the ‘cangrexo real’ (as this crab is known in Galician) are 1 kg (2.25 lb) for the male (and much less for the female).