No. 2305

"pain" of Crawfish, Chartreuse

Pain d'Ecrevisses, Chartreuse

With some raw salmon and pike meats prepare a cream forcemeat of fish (No. 76); prepare also a fine montglas with truffles, mushrooms and lobster-claw meat, cut in small Julienne; mingle all with some good thick brown sauce (No. 414) reduced with Madeira and the truffle broth. Take a part of this montglas and use it to fill seven or eight scallop shells, smooth and round the preparation on top in the shape of a dome and cover with a thin layer of fish cream forcemeat (No. 76). Butter a small, narrow, pyramidical mold, keep it on ice for a few moments and then line the sides and bottom with fish cream forcemeat (No. 76), leaving a hollow space in the center; fill this in with the montglas and close the opening with a layer of the same forcemeat. Poach the "pain" for twenty-five minutes in a bain-marie, or until it is firm to the touch in the center, keeping it covered with a round piece of paper; stand the shells steadily on a baking sheet, push into a slack oven for ten to twelve minutes, and before taking them out cover the tops with a little good veloute sauce (No. 415) reduced and finished with red butter (No. 580); take out at once and keep them warm for two minutes at the oven door, then remove and on each one lay a slice of lobster. Invert the "pain" on a small cooked noodle paste (No. 142) foundation an inch and a quarter high, it being slightly wider than the mold; coat the forcemeat with a little veloute sauce and place a slice of lobster exactly on the center of the "pain." Dress the shells around its base and serve at the same time a sauce-boatful of veloute sauce finished with red butter.

← No. 2304 "pain" of Chicken a la Villars Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2306 "pain" of Pheasant with Cream →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's-era composed entrée built entirely from cross-references: nothing here can be cooked without the forcemeat, sauce and butter recipes it points to. The hinge is temperature — a fish cream forcemeat poached above a bare simmer curdles and weeps, and the whole construction collapses when unmolded.

Bain-marie means 170–180F, never a boilThe water around the mold should barely shiver. At a rolling boil the cream in the forcemeat breaks and the pain turns granular and watery. Twenty-five minutes is right for a small mold; test for firmness at the center rather than trusting the clock.
"Slack oven" is 275–300F"Slack oven" means a low oven -- conventionally reckoned somewhere in the region of 250-300F. The shells are only being warmed through and set, not browned. Anything hotter dries the domed forcemeat before the montglas beneath is hot.
MontglasA classic garnish of truffle, mushroom and tongue, and here lobster meat, all cut in fine julienne and bound in a reduced brown sauce. It is the filling, not a sauce; it should be thick enough to hold its shape when spooned into the shells.
Fish cream forcemeatA farce a la creme: raw fish pounded with egg white, sieved, then worked over ice with heavy cream. A food processor does the pounding, but the mixture must stay thoroughly cold throughout or it will split. Sieving after grinding is not optional with pike, which is full of fine bones.
Red butterNo. 580 is a compound shellfish butter: crustacean shells and coral pounded with butter, melted, strained and chilled. It is presumably where the crawfish of the title enters, since the body of the recipe calls only for salmon, pike and lobster.
PikeRarely sold at retail in the US. Any lean white fish with good binding protein — walleye, whiting, sole, cod — will make a comparable forcemeat, though pike is prized precisely for how stiffly it sets.
The noodle paste foundationNo. 142 is a decorative socle, a cooked pasta-dough plinth that raises the pain on the platter. It is structural and traditional rather than eaten; a plain round of fried or baked bread serves the same purpose.
Yield and serviceThe seven or eight scallop shells give the scale: a small molded centerpiece with the shells dressed around its base, served hot with a sauceboat of veloute mounted with the shellfish butter. It goes cold and stiff quickly, so plate and send it out at once.

A Little History

Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house style at full stretch: a dish assembled from half a dozen other numbered preparations, each of which assumes a brigade with a pastry cook, a saucier and a garde-manger already at work. A pain in this sense is not bread but a molded loaf of forcemeat, poached in a water bath and turned out — a form prized in nineteenth-century service for its architectural look on a passed platter. The word chartreuse attached to any molded preparation lined with one thing and filled with another, a usage generally traced to the Carthusian monks' vegetable cookery and long since detached from any monastic meaning. Crawfish and lobster butter carried the color of such dishes before food coloring; the pink in the finished velouté comes entirely from pounded shells.