edit: Also it goes without saying that an MD crab cake is blue crab. I think VA crab cakes would be blue crab too, but out west I've had Dungeness crab cakes and they aren't bad but it's not the same.
We certainly have shallow-fried chicken, but that's hardly unique to Maryland. It's a very common Southern dish, and not unknown to New England either. It's easier to accomplish than deep frying.
> Old-fashioned fried chicken, Maryland Style, has attained nation-wide fame, though discriminating Free Staters often have difficulty in recogniz- ing the concoction of that name foisted on a gullible public outside the State. The standard recipe calls for a young chicken, cut into pieces, floured, and fried in deep fat. According to the oldest custom it is served on a layer of fried cornmeal mush or a crisp johnnycake with cream gravy poured over the cornbread but not over the chicken.
(I gather T&R recently changed ownership so I don't really know what its current status is or whether its fried chicken is precisely as legendary as this 90s kid remembers.)
In the pre-WWI UK, absolutely no monarchist, status-conscious first-class-traveling Englishman would have thought of Maryland as exotic.
Scrapple really is a local food, though it's not that different from other kinds of head cheese. The thing that makes it "scrapple" is the addition of cornmeal (maize), which helps it crisp up nicely when fried.
Americans get weird about off-cuts and organ meats. But if we called it "terrine de porc à la semoule de maïs" and served it with microgreens they'd sell it for $28 as an appetizer.
It combines West African techniques that used flavoured batter and palm oil to force seasoning deep into (albeit soggy) meat with Scottish techniques that used animal fat to create a crispy shell designed for preservation (albeit with little seasoning) [1]. Add in one of the few places on the planet, at the time, where cast iron was cheap enough to find its way to even slaves, and you get the cultural tradition that is Southern fried chicken: flavourful, crispy and accessible.
origins are still up for debate, but the plantation owners were more established families speaking a more accepted English dialect, while the field hands would more likely be newer voluntary immigrants such as Scottish and Irish and more interaction and cross drift with the West African slaves
Dredge chicken pieces (usually thighs)in flour. Sprinkle Lawry's Seasoned Salt on both sides.
Heat 1/4" oil (usually canola) in electric skillet set on 350.
Place in skillet, cook 5 minutes each side, then cover and cook 5 minutes each side, then maybe 5 more minutes each side until done. Remove chicken, drain off oil leaving maybe 1/4 cup in pan, add equal amount of flour, stir, add milk and continue stirring until the right consistency (maybe 1-1.5 cups of milk)
Never really heard her refer to it as 'Maryland' fried chicken though, and outside of Lawry's (McCormick spices was headquartered in Baltimore) doesn't seem different from what a cook would make anywhere else. It is good, though, much better than any regular restaurant fried chicken.
And as another poster mentioned it wasn't nearly as religious an item as crab cakes or she-crab soup. The number of times my Mom interrogated a hapless waitperson to try to figure out if they were 'really' Maryland crabcakes...
[edit] actually, the steaming bit is a deviation from the simplest preparation. Not sure how big a difference it makes, possibly a lot. Wikipedia also claims that the traditional Maryland-native dish may include a banana garnish, though this article doesn’t mention that.
It was originally for crabs, and that particular dish really is a distinctive local tradition. Applying it to everything and calling it "Maryland" really only dates to the 70s.