No. 213

Bisque of Shrimps, Bretonne

Bisque de Crevettes, Bretonne

Have three pounds of very fresh shrimps, throw them into boiling salted water and boil them for a few minutes, then drain and remove the shells from the largest ones, allowing three for each person; stuff these with pike forcemeat (No. 90), mixed with fine herbs; then poach them in boiling salted water, drain and keep them aside for garnishing the soup. Pound the remainder of the shrimps with a quarter of their quantity of crushed wheaten grits, previously cooked in water for thirty minutes, also twelve ounces of minced onion blanched and fried colorless in butter, adding to it six spoonfuls of flour diluted with milk, and cook all very slowly. Moisten the puree with broth, pass it through a sieve or tammy, put the puree into a saucepan, heat it to near the boiling point, then season with salt and cayenne pepper; when ready to serve add a piece of butter. Place the stuffed shrimp shells in the soup tureen, pour the soup over the puree and serve.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot always going and a pike forcemeat already made; the dish comes together fine at home once you translate the vessels, the grain and the cross-references.

Do not boil the finished bisqueThe puree is thickened with flour and enriched with butter at the last moment, and shrimp protein tightens fast. Bring it to just below a simmer, mount in the butter off the heat, and send it out. Boiling after the butter goes in will break the surface into oil beads.
Crushed wheaten gritsThis is cracked or crushed wheat, close to a coarse bulgur, not hominy grits and not semolina. It is boiled thirty minutes in water first so it is fully soft, then pounded with the shrimp as a thickener and body-builder. Coarse bulgur, simmered until slack, is the nearest modern stand-in.
Pike forcemeat, No. 90A pounded pike quenelle mixture; forcemeats of this type are generally bound with a panada, egg and butter, but the actual formula sits in the cross-reference, not here. Pike is hard to buy; any lean white fish forcemeat (pollock, walleye, cod) behaves the same way. If you skip the cross-reference entirely, a shrimp mousseline is a reasonable substitute for the stuffing.
"Stuff these with"What is being stuffed is the emptied shell of the largest shrimp; the recipe says only to remove the shells from the largest ones and does not specify which part. Three per person, filled with forcemeat, poached briefly in salted water, and set in the tureen as garnish.
Six spoonfuls of flourA plain "spoonful" in this book is usually a tablespoon, so read this as roughly 6 tablespoons of flour slaked with milk into a thin paste. It is a substantial thickening for three pounds of shrimp; add it gradually and judge the body yourself rather than committing all of it.
TammyA tammy cloth is a fine woven straining cloth. A chinois with the back of a ladle, or a fine sieve followed by a pass through cheesecloth, gives the same result. The shells and grit must be fully caught or the texture is ruined.
The first boiling"A few minutes" is generous by current practice. Two to three minutes in heavily salted water is enough for whole shrimp of eating size; they will be cooked again inside the puree and the garnish shells are poached a second time.
YieldThe recipe gives no number of covers. Three pounds of shell-on shrimp with twelve ounces of onion and the grits makes a rich soup for perhaps eight to ten, with the garnish set at three stuffed shells per person.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the book is essentially the house repertoire set down in numbered order, which is why the recipe sends you off to No. 90 for its forcemeat rather than repeating it. Early French bisques were thickened with bread or grain rather than the rice and cream of the modern version, and the crushed wheat here belongs to that older manner; the word itself was not originally confined to shellfish soups. The label bretonne covers more than one thing in nineteenth-century kitchens -- it is often a white-bean garnish -- but it is also attached to preparations built on onion cooked slowly in butter without color, which is what the twelve ounces of blanched minced onion are doing here. Stuffed shells floated in the tureen appear as a garnish in shellfish soups of this period and in later French service.