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Crayfish in Jelly
Crayfish are something like lobsters, but smaller, and the flesh more delicate; indeed, they are more useful and delicious than any other shell-fish, and if every housekeeper were to inquire for them two or three times at the fishmonger's they would soon become plentiful. There are several kinds; those are considered the best which are reddish under the claws. To serve them in jelly, take a pint of fish for rather less than a pint of savoury jelly (see ASPIC JELLY). Put a little jelly at the bottom of a mould; when it is cold, lay the crayfish upon it, and repeat this until the materials are finished, but care must be taken to let the jelly stiffen each time or all will sink to the bottom, and also to put the fish in with the back down-wards, or they will be wrong side up when turned out. Garnish with parsley. This is a pretty dish. Time, thirty-six hours or more. Probable cost, crayfish, 2s. per quart. Sufficient for a quart mould.
A layered aspic that depends almost entirely on patience: each layer must be fully set before the next goes in. Everything else is assembly.
- The hingeSet each layer of jelly firm before adding the next, and add the crayfish only when the jelly beneath will hold them. Pour warm jelly over a soft layer and the fish drift to the bottom, which is the failure the recipe explicitly warns against.
- The crayfish are already cookedThe recipe gives no cooking instruction, which implies the fish are bought or boiled ready. Live crayfish need about 3-5 minutes in heavily salted boiling water, then cooling; tails are peeled, and the whole small ones can be left in shell for looks.
- SourcingWild-caught native crayfish are legally protected in parts of Europe, including the white-clawed crayfish in Britain, so do not gather your own. Farmed or imported signal and red swamp crayfish are sold frozen and cooked in most places, and Louisiana crawfish tails are an easy substitute.
- "A pint of fish"This is a volume measure of shelled or whole small crayfish packed into a pint measure, not a weight, so it is genuinely approximate. Reckon on roughly 12 oz to 1 lb of picked tail meat for a quart (about 1 litre) mould.
- Aspic jellyThe cross-referenced aspic is a clarified savoury stock set with its own gelatine or with added sheet gelatine. A modern fish or light chicken stock with about 6-7 sheets of gelatine per litre gives an unmoulding set; anything softer will slump on the plate.
- "Time, thirty-six hours or more"That figure presumably allows for making and clarifying the aspic as well as setting it. In a refrigerator each layer sets in 20-40 minutes, and the finished mould wants 4-6 hours or overnight before turning out.
- Turning outDip the mould in hot water for five to ten seconds, no longer, then invert onto a wetted plate. The instruction to lay the crayfish backs downward matters here: the mould is upside down relative to the finished dish.
- YieldA quart mould serves six as a first course, four as a light lunch with bread and butter. Keep it refrigerated until the moment it goes to table; aspic softens quickly in a warm room.
Aspic work of this kind was a staple of the late-Victorian cold table, where a moulded, glossy, layered dish did the decorative work that a chef's garnish did in a restaurant. Crayfish were once genuinely abundant in English rivers, and Cassell's small campaign here - the suggestion that housekeepers ask for them repeatedly until fishmongers stock them - reflects a period when they were slipping out of ordinary trade. Crayfish plague was already spreading on the continent from the 1860s and 1870s, though it did not reach Britain until the 1980s, when it and introduced American species reshaped populations. The instruction to note which kinds are "reddish under the claws" belongs to a time when buyers were expected to judge species and freshness by eye at the stall rather than read a label, and the quoted price of two shillings a quart marks the dish as a modest luxury rather than a grand one.