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Crayfish, Potted
Boil the fish in water with plenty of salt in it. Pick out the meat and pound it well in a mortar with a little grated nutmeg or pounded mace, pepper, salt, and a small quantity of fresh butter. An ounce of butter may be allowed to a pint of crayfish. Put the paste into small jars, cover these with clarified butter, and cover closely. Time, ten minutes to boil the crayfish. Probable cost, 2s. per quart.
A very short entry that assumes you already know how to pot fish. The hinge is the fat ratio: an ounce of butter to a pint of meat gives a dry, crumbly paste by modern standards, and modern potted shellfish uses several times that.
- Butter ratioAn ounce of butter to a pint of picked crayfish meat is a Victorian sparing hand. Modern potted shrimp and crayfish run closer to 4-6 oz of butter per pint of meat, which is what gives the smooth, spreadable texture people now expect. Add butter until the pounded meat holds together and tastes rich rather than merely seasoned.
- "A pint of crayfish"The measure is ambiguous. It may mean picked meat, though the price "per quart" suggests crayfish were also sold by measure in the shell. Read as picked tail and claw meat, a pint is roughly 10-12 oz by weight, and getting there takes several pounds of crayfish in the shell.
- Boiling timeTen minutes is longer than small crayfish need; they are cooked in 3-5 minutes once the water returns to a boil, and beyond that the tail meat tightens and shreds instead of pounding smooth. Salt the water heavily, as directed, and cool the fish before picking.
- Mace and nutmegBlade mace, pounded, was a characteristic potting spice and is milder and more floral than nutmeg. Either works; use a scant quarter teaspoon per pint of meat, as both dominate quickly. Cayenne, which many later potted-shrimp recipes add, is absent here.
- Mortar, or notA food processor will do the pounding, but pulse rather than run it; crayfish meat turns to paste-glue if overworked. Some cooks pound half and fold in the rest roughly chopped for texture.
- Clarified butterMelt butter gently and pour off the clear fat, leaving the milky solids behind. The solids are what spoil, which is why the seal has to be clarified. Pour it over cold, firmly packed meat so it sets as a continuous layer with no channels down the side of the jar.
- Storage, which is where the original misleadsThe butter seal was a nineteenth-century larder measure, not a preservation method that stands up now. Treat potted crayfish as a fresh refrigerated product: keep it cold and eat it within three or four days. It is a low-acid seafood under an airless fat cap, and it should never be left at room temperature.
- Yield and servingA pint of meat fills four or five small ramekins. Serve cold with hot toast, lemon and pepper, letting the butter soften slightly first.
- Cost"2s. per quart" is two shillings, a period price for river crayfish sold by the quart measure in shell. It carries no useful modern equivalent.
Potting was the English answer to a glut: cooked meat or fish pounded with butter and spice, packed tight and sealed under a layer of clarified fat that kept air off it in a cold larder. Crayfish were a common enough freshwater catch in British rivers through the nineteenth century to be sold by the quart, which is why Cassell's can treat them as an everyday potting subject alongside beef, ham and shrimps. The same method survives most visibly today in Morecambe Bay potted shrimps, which keep the mace and the butter seal almost unchanged. Anyone shopping for the ingredient now should know the picture has altered: Britain's native white-clawed crayfish has collapsed under crayfish plague and is a protected species, while the introduced American signal crayfish that displaced it is invasive and its taking is regulated. Buy from a licensed supplier, or use shrimp, for which this recipe works exactly as written.