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Crayfish Stock
Boil three dozen crayfish, put the meat from the tails together with the bodies into a mortar and pound thoroughly with one dozen blanched sweet almonds. Put four ounces each of ham and veal into a saucepan with a few parsnips, sliced onions and carrots, cook for a few minutes on the side of the fire, then add a small quantity of melted bacon fat and one teaspoonful of flour, stir the latter in thoroughly and pour in the amount of stock required. Season with mushrooms, truffles, chives, cloves, basil, salt, pepper and parsley, and add two or three small breadcrusts. Simmer slowly until the veal is done, take it out, add the mashed crayfish and rub the whole through a fine sieve. It is then ready for use. This stock may be used for moistening pies, patties. etc., or for cooking such vegetables as cauliflowers, cardoons, etc., or it may simply be served with boiled rice.
A classical French coulis d'écrevisses in all but name, written for a brigade that had a mortar, a stockpot and someone to man the sieve. It scales down to a home kitchen with a blender, but the shells are the whole point and need to be handled deliberately.
- The hinge: pound the shells, not just the meatOscar has you pound the tail meat together with the bodies, and that is where the flavor and the coral color live. Skip the shells and you get a thin veal broth with almonds in it. Pulverize everything, shells included, before it goes into the pot.
- Three dozen crayfishPerhaps 2 to 3 lb of live crayfish depending on size, yielding only a few ounces of tail meat. Boil 3-4 minutes in salted water, then work with the whole animal. Whole cooked crawfish from a Gulf supplier are an acceptable substitute; shell-on head-on shrimp will stand in at a loss of character.
- "On the side of the fire"A range was hottest over the firebox and cooler away from it, so the side of the fire meant gentle heat. Sweat the ham, veal and vegetables over low heat without coloring them, 8-10 minutes.
- Blanched sweet almondsSweet almonds are ordinary almonds; the specification distinguishes them from bitter almonds, which older books also called for and which are not sold for food. Blanched means skinned. A dozen is about 1/2 oz, and they act as a thickener and softener, a survival of medieval nut-thickened sauces.
- Melted bacon fat and a teaspoon of flourThis is a very light roux, meant to bind rather than thicken. Use about a tablespoon of fat, cook the flour a minute, and expect a stock with body rather than a sauce.
- "The amount of stock required"Unhelpfully vague, as period professional books often are. About 1 1/2 quarts of light veal or chicken stock suits these quantities and reduces to a usable quart.
- Simmering time"Until the veal is done" means 45 minutes to an hour at a bare simmer for a 4 oz piece. Longer does no harm to the stock, but do not add the pounded crayfish until the end, as suggested — extended boiling dulls shellfish flavor and turns it flat.
- StrainingRubbing shell debris through a fine sieve is slow and thankless. Press hard through a chinois or a conical strainer with a ladle, then pass again through cheesecloth. Discard the solids; there is no second extraction worth having.
- Yield and useAbout a quart of intensely flavored, faintly pink stock. Freeze in small portions. Cardoons, the artichoke relative Oscar names, are still sold in Italian markets in late fall and winter.
Crayfish sauces were a fixture of nineteenth-century haute cuisine, and Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf kitchen worked squarely in that French tradition when this book appeared in 1896. The almonds are the oldest thing in the recipe: nut-thickened sauces were standard in medieval and Renaissance European cooking, and by Oscar's day they survived mainly in shellfish preparations. The recipe also shows how a grand hotel kitchen worked — stock was made in quantity and drawn on for pies, patties, vegetables and rice as the day's orders required.