No. 1010

Crawfish, Maison d'Or

Ecrevisses Maison d'Or

After three dozen crawfish have been cooked in the court-bouillon (No. 1009), dress them in a silver tureen. Fry in butter some pieces of raw lean ham cut in one-eighth inch squares, moisten with the court bouillon and the same quantity of champagne, adding fish-glaze (No. 399); reduce and incorporate in a little fresh butter; pour this over the crawfish, and strew over a little chopped parsley.

← No. 1009 Crawfish au Court Bouillion and Mariniere Crawfish No. 1011 Crawfish with Butter →

For the Modern Kitchen

A simple assembly that stands or falls on the sauce: a butter-mounted reduction of court-bouillon, champagne and fish glaze. Read the cross-referenced recipes first, since Ranhofer assumes you have both a court-bouillon and a jar of fish glaze already made.

The hinge: mount the butter off the heat"Incorporate in a little fresh butter" means whisking cold butter into the reduced liquid away from direct heat, so the sauce thickens and stays glossy. If it boils after the butter goes in it will break into oil and a thin puddle.
Cooking the crawfishLive crawfish need only 4 to 8 minutes in simmering court-bouillon depending on size — they are done when the tails curl tight and the shells turn red. Overcooking turns the tail meat cottony. The timing is not stated here; it belongs to the court-bouillon recipe (No. 1009).
Fish-glaze (No. 399)Glace de poisson: fish stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. A teaspoon or two is enough here. Commercial fish demi-glace or a well-reduced homemade fumet stands in; bottled clam juice does not, being too salty and too thin to give body.
Raw lean hamUncooked dry-cured ham — prosciutto, speck or a country ham — not modern wet-cured deli ham, which will weep water into the pan instead of browning. Cut it in one-eighth inch dice, about 2 to 3 oz for three dozen crawfish.
ChampagneAny dry sparkling wine works, and the bubbles are irrelevant once it reduces; a dry still white is a reasonable substitute. The recipe calls for it in equal measure to the court-bouillon but gives no volumes; about half a cup of each is a workable modern guess, reduced well before the butter goes in.
"Silver tureen"A deep serving bowl, warmed. The point is that the crawfish come to table whole in their shells with the sauce over them, so set out finger bowls or napkins and a discard plate.
Purging and cleaningRinse live crawfish in several changes of cold water and discard any that are already dead. Some cooks devein the tail by pulling out the intestinal thread before cooking; this recipe says nothing about it.
YieldThree dozen crawfish is a first course for four, or two if they are the small freshwater kind. Bread is worth having for the sauce.

A Little History

The name is often taken to point to the Maison Dor e, the celebrated restaurant on the Boulevard des Italiens in Paris; Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's and author of The Epicurean (1894), trained in that Parisian world and carried its nomenclature with him, so a garnish or dressing named for a restaurant is a common signature in his book. The dish belongs to a long section of crawfish preparations that shows how ordinary the small freshwater crayfish was on nineteenth-century restaurant menus, served whole in the shell and eaten with the fingers as a first course écrevisses à la nage and in Louisiana boils. The champagne and dice of raw ham are typical of the period's method for building a sauce quickly at service from things already standing on the stove: court-bouillon from the poaching pot, glaze from the stock reduction, butter to finish.