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Shell Fish and Fish Entrées
CRAB.
Coquille de crabe is scalloped crab, served in the shell. As Suprême de crabe aux tomates, it is dressed with tomato sauce and breadcrumbs, and served in the shell.
Petites coquilles de crabe en mayonnaise are little shell moulds of crab forcemeat, served with salad and Mayonnaise sauce.
It may also be dressed in little fried cakes, as Crépinettes de crabe, in a soufflé, and in many of the ways suggested for lobster.
CRAYFISH.
Ecrevisses au court-bouillon are boiled in courtbouillon. If served in Bordelaise sauce, they are called à la Bordelaise.
Aspic d'écrevisses-a mould of aspic with crayfish, and vegetables cut in shapes; served with Mayonnaise sauce.
Petits pâtés aux écrevisses-covered patties, filled with crayfish and quenelles of fish.
Langouste à la broche. Sea crayfish roasted.
LOBSTER.
Homard au court-bouillon is boiled in court-bouillon, and served with lobster sauce. à la Bordelaise-cut up and served in Bordelaise sauce.
Homard au kari-curried; served with boiled rice. en aspic-slices coated with white sauce, in a mould of aspic. en ciel is a cream made of pounded lobster with clotted or whipped cream, served in little cases.
Côtelettes de homard are lobster cutlets. They may be served with Mayonnaise sauce.
Miroton de homard à la Cardinal. Slices of lobster, half of them dipped in white sauce, and half in the same sauce coloured with lobster butter; dressed on a salad with Mayonnaise sauce.
Coquille de homard. Scalloped lobster, served in the shell.
Croquettes de homard are croquettes of lobster, breadcrumbed and fried. Rissoles de homard is the same preparation folded in thin pieces of paste, breadcrumbed and fried.
Petits vol-au-vents, or petits pâtés, de homard are little puff paste patties filled with the croquette preparation of lobster.
Bouchées de homard à la Béchamel are patties smaller than the vol-au-vents, filled with chopped lobster in Béchamel sauce.
Mayonnaise de homard the lobster cut up and served with lettuces and Mayonnaise sauce; ornamented with anchovies, olives and hardboiled egg. Salade de homard à l'Indienne-cut in slices and served on a salad with Indian pickles and Mayonnaise sauce; garnished with hard-boiled egg.
Crab, crayfish and lobster. The clearest thing on the page is how cheap the lobster must have been, because nearly every dish here minces it, pounds it, or hides it inside pastry.
- Court-bouillonSalted water with vinegar or wine, onion, carrot, herbs and pepper, brought to the boil before the shellfish goes in. It is the default throughout the page and it is still the right way to cook a lobster or a crab; plain water throws away the chance to season the flesh through the shell.
- Homard and langousteNot the same animal. Homard is the clawed lobster. Langouste is the spiny or rock lobster, which has no claws and carries nearly all its meat in the tail, so langouste à la broche means that tail, split and roasted.
- ÉcrevissesFreshwater crayfish, and what that means depends entirely on where you are. In Britain the native white-clawed crayfish is now protected and scarce and the introduced American signal crayfish is what gets caught; in the American South they are farmed and sold by the sack. The cooking is easy; the animal is a different proposition in each place.
- Vol-au-vent, petit pâté, bouchéeThe page is precise about size and the precision is real. A vol-au-vent is a deep case to be filled and carved into, a petit pâté is a covered individual one, and a bouchée is a mouthful. Choosing the wrong one changes which course the dish belongs to.
- Lobster butterSeveral dishes take their colour from it: shells and coral pounded with butter, warmed and strained. It is the only way to make the sauce coloured with lobster butter that the Cardinal dish asks for, and it cannot be made at all if the shells have gone in the bin.
- Picking crabCoquille de crabe wants the meat out and the shell back on the plate. Keep brown meat and white separate as you pick: the brown is strong and makes the sauce, the white is the part meant to be seen.
The page is organised around what a shell can be made to carry. Coquille, aspic mould, cutlet shape, patty case, little paper case, the crab’s own carapace: a kitchen of this sort kept scallop shells and crab shells washed and stacked for exactly this purpose, because a dish that arrived in its own shell needed no plating and announced itself across a table. What that arrangement also did was make a small quantity of expensive meat look like a whole animal, which is the other half of the economy here. Read the verbs rather than the nouns and the status of shellfish in this period comes clear: scalloped, pounded, minced, moulded, folded into paste and fried. The lobster is treated as a flavour to be spread across a course, not as a thing set whole in front of one person, and that is a decision about price before it is a decision about taste.