There's always a bit of an eye roll when out-of-staters reduce Marylanders to crabs, Old Bay, and our perhaps inordinate love of the state's flag. The thing is, they're not wrong. Picking crabs is a coveted tradition where I come from, one that every family big or small, acquired or chosen, looks forward to when summer rolls around. As for the flag - in a sea of state seals-on-blue, can you blame us?
While the exact spice blend has been kept under proverbial lock and key ever since the German-Jewish immigrant Gustav Brunn founded the Baltimore Spice Company in the late 1930s, McCormick is willing to tell us that Brunn's secret recipe relies heavily on the flavors of celery salt, paprika, and mustard seed.
Basic math even suggests that Old Bay would work in place of celery salt on a Chicago dog (I say this trepidatiously, knowing how fiercely Chicagoans protect their coveted classic from suggested substitutions).
Celery salt is also often a big player in the spice blend that rims bloody mary glasses, as is paprika, another one of Old Bay's pillar ingredients. So it's no surprise that brunch menus throughout the mid-Atlantic and Carolinas call out Old Bay as a cocktail seasoning.
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