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Crab Ravigote
Boil some large hard-shell crabs, after which put them aside to become cold. Then turn them over on the hard shell side and with a sharp knife cut the breast away. Pick the meat off, clean it nicely, being careful not to leave any pieces of shell in it, and season lightly with salt and pepper. Mix with thick remoulade sauce and fill up one of the shells, which has previously been washed clean, with the mixture. The meat of two good-sized crabs so treated will be sufficient to fill the inside of one shell. Cover the meat with mayonnaise and decorate with fillet of anchovy and sliced pickles. Serve on a folded napkin with branches of parsley and quartered lemon.
A cold crab salad dressed twice over — once with remoulade, once with mayonnaise — and served back in the shell. Nothing here is difficult, but the recipe assumes you know how to break down a boiled crab and that a sauce cupboard is already stocked.
- Which crab"Large hard-shell crabs" in a New York kitchen of this period were most likely blue crabs, sold hard-shell as opposed to soft-shell, though the recipe does not say. Two good-sized crabs fill one shell, as Oscar says; that is a modest amount of picked meat. Dungeness or a good lump crabmeat works, though you lose the shell as a serving dish.
- Boiling timeThe recipe gives none. Blue crabs need 8-10 minutes in hard-boiling salted water once the water returns to the boil; larger Dungeness 15-18 minutes. Overcooked crab turns stringy and picks badly.
- Cleaning the shellThe top shell used as a bowl must be scrubbed inside and out and the gills, apron and viscera discarded. Scald it in the boiling water for a minute and let it dry before filling. Restaurant practice today would sanitize it; a small dish or a scallop shell can be substituted.
- The nameNote that the dish is called ravigote but the binding sauce specified is remoulade. Remoulade is mayonnaise-based, with mustard, herbs and sometimes anchovy; classical cold ravigote is a vinaigrette sharpened with capers, onion and herbs, though American kitchens often made it with mayonnaise. If you want it to match the title, use a herbed ravigote.
- "Thick" remouladeThe emphasis matters. A loose sauce will slump out of the shell and weep on the plate. Make or buy a stiff mayonnaise, and dress the crab sparingly — the meat should be coated, not soupy.
- Raw-egg mayonnaiseBoth sauces here are uncooked and go onto cold crab that will sit on a plate. Use pasteurized eggs or a commercial mayonnaise as the base, keep everything refrigerated until service, and do not let the assembled dish stand at room temperature.
- SeasoningAnchovy fillets, pickles and a mustard-forward remoulade all bring salt. Season the picked meat very lightly, as instructed, and taste before adding more.
- Yield and serviceAs written this is one filled shell, a first course for one. The folded napkin is a period presentation to keep the shell from sliding; a bed of crushed ice or shredded lettuce does the same job and keeps it cold.
Oscar Tschirky's book records the Waldorf's à la carte repertoire around 1896, when the hotel's kitchen worked largely in a French idiom while also carrying American and German dishes, and cold dressed shellfish under a classical sauce name was standard first-course fare. Ravigote comes from the French ravigoter, to invigorate or perk up — a sauce sharpened with vinegar, herbs and capers, existing in both a warm velouté-based version and a cold version. The slippage between ravigote and remoulade in this entry is characteristic of American hotel cookery of the era, where French sauce names were applied loosely and menus were written in French for prestige as much as precision. Serving the meat back in its own scrubbed shell on a folded napkin was a dining-room convention of the period, one that survives in crab and lobster service today.