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Bisque of Crabs
Place a dozen live crabs in some cold water with a little salt, and let them soak there for one hour, then hash up a couple of ounces of carrot with an equal quantity of onion, and fry them together with a little butter in a saucepan large enough to hold the crabs, add a little parsley in sprigs, thyme and bay leaf, seasoning with salt, a quarter of a bottle of white wine and a little white stock, then cover with the lid and cook for fifteen minutes, after which remove the crabs, strain the broth, and place it one side for twenty minutes, when the top should be poured off. Next, remove the shells from the crabs, taking out the lungs from both sides, and wash each one at a time in some slightly warmed water, removing the small legs, then drain them and pound to a paste, with about half their quantity of cooked rice, add a little of the juice in which they have been cooked, drain first through a sieve and then through a tammy-cloth, and mix in half a pint of bechamel sauce. Add a little salt and red pepper, and place over the fire just previous to serving, but do not allow it to come to a boil, adding an eighth of a pound of fine butter, and mix with a spoon until entirely melted, and serve with bread crusts fried in butter.
A classic French shellfish bisque of the pounded-shell school, written for a brigade with a mortar and a tammy. The method still works; most of the labour can be handed to a machine.
- The hinge: never let it boilOnce the bechamel and the finishing butter go in, the soup is held below a simmer. Boiling breaks the butter emulsion and turns the rice-and-shell purée grainy.
- A dozen crabsProbably blue crabs, the crab most readily to hand in an East Coast kitchen of the 1890s, though the recipe does not say. A dozen crabs of 5-6 in. gives roughly a pound of picked meat and plenty of shell for the puree. Figure six to eight first-course servings.
- "Lungs"The feathery grey gills along each side of the body. They are inedible and bitter; strip them off along with the apron and stomach sac before the crab goes into the mortar.
- Wine and stockA quarter of a bottle is about 6 fl oz. 'A little white stock' implies only enough liquid to steam the crabs rather than cover them; the concentrated liquor is the flavour base.
- Fifteen minutes coveredEnough for live blue crabs in a hot, tightly lidded pan. Larger crabs need longer; the shells should be uniformly red and the meat opaque.
- "Place it one side for twenty minutes, when the top should be poured off"Ambiguous as written. The sense is to let the broth settle so it can be separated cleanly: skim off the fat and scum that rise, then pour the clear liquid off any grit at the bottom.
- Pounding and the tammy-clothA tammy is a fine worsted straining cloth. A food processor will do the pounding, and a fine chinois lined with muslin does the tammy's work. Press hard: the shell fragments must be crushed with the rice to give up their flavour, then held back entirely by the cloth.
- Rice as thickenerCooked white rice, about half the volume of the crab and shell, is the traditional bisque liaison and gives the soup its body; the bechamel adds richness on top of it. Half a pint is one cup.
- Red pepperCayenne, used sparingly; the period term for it in a professional kitchen. An eighth of a pound of butter is 4 tablespoons, whisked in off direct heat.
Bisque in nineteenth-century professional cooking meant one thing above all: a pur h, thickened with rice. The word is generally traced to the Bay of Biscay, though the derivation is traditional rather than documented, and older French usage applied it to pur ies this this version in its place and moment is the ingredient - crabs, cheap and abundant on the Atlantic coast - handled by a strictly French method. Oscar Tschirky was maitre d'hotel rather than chef at the Waldorf, and the recipes he collected in 1896 read as the working repertoire of that kitchen: escoffier-era technique, American raw materials, and no concession to the domestic cook who lacks a mortar, a tammy-cloth and an afternoon.