Old Bay

A celery salt–based spice blend with paprika, mustard, black pepper, and aromatics. It tastes savory, salty, and warm with gentle heat, giving seafood a briny snap. Cooks shake it over crab, shrimp, fries, popcorn, and deviled eggs, or use it to rim cocktail glasses; it is sold as a fine, free-flowing powder.

It emerged in the mid-Atlantic United States, especially the Chesapeake Bay region, where it became a staple for blue crab and seafood cookery, and its profile later spread nationwide.