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Bisque of Crayfish
Procure five or six dozen fresh water crayfish, and boil them without any vinegar in the water. Select two dozen and a half of the finest tails that remain whole, and pound the rest with all the fleshy parts and meat in a mortar, with the flesh from the breasts of two roasted chickens or fowls. Boil the crumb of a couple of French rolls in some rich broth; place this in a mortar with a few yolks of hard boiled eggs, and pound well together, then mix thoroughly with the crayfish and chicken; put the shells of the fish to boil in a little water or broth, and rub through a fine sieve. Boil a pint and a half of cream, stirring continually so that no scum will arise; pour this into the soup, seasoning with salt and pepper. Have in readiness two spawn of a lobster well pounded, dilute it with some of the broth, and mix in with the soup, which must be kept hot but without boiling. Soak a few rounds of bread and lay them at the bottom of a tureen, pour the bisque over them, place the tails which have been placed one side, over the soup, and serve very hot.
A classic 19th-century bisque built on pounded shellfish and bread rather than roux, with a few steps the text leaves to the cook's judgement.
- Quantity and yieldFive or six dozen crayfish yields roughly 8-10 servings of a rich soup; live crayfish run about 12-15 per pound, so plan on 4-5 lb. If you can only get frozen crayfish tails, buy about 1 lb of tail meat and 2-3 lb of shells or heads separately, since the shells carry most of the flavour here.
- The hinge: never let it boilOnce cream and lobster spawn go in, the soup is held hot but below a simmer, as the recipe insists. Boiling risks the coral setting into grains and the soup separating.
- Boil them without vinegarCourt-bouillon for crayfish normally carries vinegar or wine, which would sharpen a cream soup. Plain salted water, 3-4 minutes from the boil, is what is wanted.
- Mortar workThe pounding is the whole technique, and a food processor followed by a fine sieve or tamis does it in minutes. Work the shells and bodies with a little broth to a coarse paste, then press hard through the sieve and discard the shell grit.
- French rolls and crumb"The crumb of a couple of French rolls" means the soft interior of two small crusty rolls, torn out, roughly 2 cups loosely packed. It is the main thickener, along with the hard-boiled yolks and pounded flesh; there is no flour in the soup.
- Two spawn of a lobsterThis means the coral (roe) from two hen lobsters, used as a colouring and enriching agent. It is seasonal and hard to buy separately; a tablespoon or two of lobster or crayfish butter gives the same colour and body if coral is unavailable.
- Cream measureA pint and a half is 3 cups. Scald it on its own first, stirring, so it goes into the soup hot and no skin forms.
- Broth"Rich broth" here means a strong veal or chicken stock, unsalted enough that reduction will not oversalt the finished soup. Season at the end, once the cream is in.
- AssemblyThe reserved whole tails and the soaked bread rounds are the garnish and the base respectively; warm the tails briefly in a little of the soup before setting them on top, or they will chill the surface.
Bisque in the older French sense meant a thick shellfish soup thickened with pounded meat, bread and egg yolk, well before the roux-and-rice versions that dominate later cookbooks; the name is generally traced to the Biscay coast, though that etymology is traditional rather than settled. The freshwater crayfish, or écrevisse, was the standard bisque shellfish in French kitchens and remained common on American menus into the early 1900s. That the recipe would also enrich the soup with the breast meat of two roast fowl and lobster coral says a good deal about the period's hotel cooking, where a single tureen of soup might consume more protein than a modern main course, and where labour in the form of a mortar and a strong arm cost the house very little.