No. 1009

Crawfish au Court Bouillion and Mariniere

Ecrevisses au Court Bouillon et a la Mariniere

To prepare the court bouillon, mince up two ounces of onions, two ounces of celery root and two ounces of carrots, and put them into a saucepan with a bunch of parsley, thyme and bay leaf, also one pint of water, some salt and a pint of white wine; let boil for ten minutes. Put three dozen live crawfish into a net, plunge this into boiling water and leave it until the shells turn red, then take it out, and break off the small legs, and finish cooking the fish in the court bouillon for about ten minutes, tossing them well in the meanwhile; remove them with a skimmer and dress them. Strain the broth or court bouillon, reduce it to half, add a piece of fresh butter and pour it over the crawfish.

Mariniere.—After the three dozen crawfish have been cooked in the court bouillon, dress them in a silver tureen; strain the court bouillon, reduce it to half with a little brandy and thicken it with kneaded butter and bread-crumbs, season with salt and a dash of cayenne, and incorporate into it a little piece of fresh butter; pour this over the crawfish, toss them well, and strew over some chopped parsley.

← No. 1008 Crawfish a la Bordelaise Crawfish No. 1010 Crawfish, Maison d'Or →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two finishes for the same pot of crayfish: one a light buttered broth, the other thickened with beurre manié and brandy. The whole thing takes under half an hour once the crayfish are in hand.

Don't cook them twiceRanhofer boils the crayfish until the shells turn red, then gives them ten more minutes in the court bouillon. That is roughly twice what small crayfish need. Blanch only until the shells colour (2-3 minutes), then move them into the simmering court bouillon for 3-4 minutes to take up flavour; beyond that the tail meat turns cottony and shreds when you shell it.
Celery root"Celery root" is celeriac, not the stalks. Two ounces is a wedge about the size of a small egg. Ordinary celery stalk works, with a slightly greener result.
The netA net is simply so three dozen thrashing crayfish go in and come out together. A wire frying basket, a large sieve, or a colander that fits your pot does the same job.
Kneaded butterBeurre manié: equal weights of soft butter and flour worked to a paste, whisked into the hot liquid off the boil. Here the breadcrumbs do some of that work too, so start with about a tablespoon of each and judge the body as it goes.
The brandy is unmeasured"A little brandy" in a sauce for three dozen crayfish means an ounce or two, added to the strained broth while it reduces so the raw alcohol cooks off. There is no figure in the original; err low, since the reduction concentrates it.
Buying live crayfishThey must be alive going in. Discard any that are limp or unresponsive before cooking, and purge them in cold water for an hour if they come muddy. Ranhofer does not say which species he used; what you will get today is American crayfish, which are smaller-tailed than the European sort.
ServingThree dozen is a first course for three or four, eaten with the fingers from the shell. The "silver tureen" is presentation, not function; any warmed deep dish holds the sauce well enough.

A Little History

Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) after a career at Delmonico's spanning roughly three decades (in two spells from the 1860s to the 1890s), and the crawfish chapter shows how directly he carried French restaurant practice into New York. À la marinière is usually rendered "in the sailor's manner" and is applied loosely across nineteenth-century French cookery to shellfish finished in their own reduced cooking liquor with wine and butter; the same term attaches to mussels, where it survives today. The court bouillon — "short broth" — is a vegetable and wine infusion built to be used at once rather than kept, and the two versions here differ only in the finish, so one pot yields two menu listings. Crayfish carried real prestige in this period: they were the basis of bisque, of crayfish butter, and of the tail garnishes that decorated grand fish dishes, so a kitchen serving Ranhofer's menus would have had them on hand continually.