No. 303

Crab and Shrimp Soup a la Loubat

Potage aux Crabes et aux Crevettes a la Loubat

Wash well twenty-four hard crabs; boil them, and remove all the shells as well as the lungs; cleanse them in water changing it frequently, then remove all the meat contained therein, and pound it while diluting with three pints of thickened fish soup stock (No. 195). Allow to despumate for half an hour, then skim off the fat and strain it through a sieve, returning it to a clean saucepan; place this on the fire, and stir continually, and at the first boil, skim it carefully; adding some red pepper; thicken the soup with six egg-yolks, half a pint of cream and three ounces of butter; make a garnishing of quenelles as follows: Have a pike quenelle forcemeat (No. 90), pushed through a cornet to form three-sixteenths of an inch beads, on a buttered tin sheet, and poach them in boiling, salted water; have also three-eights inch ball of potatoes cooked in a very little white broth, and some shrimp tails cut into two or three pieces.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stock already made and forcemeat already mixed, so the page reads as a sketch. Read it as three separate jobs: crab-enriched stock, a yolk-and-cream liaison, and a garnish of three small elements.

Never boil after the liaisonSix yolks, half a pint of cream and three ounces of butter go in off the heat or over the barest heat, whisked in with some hot soup first to temper them. Once the yolks are in, the soup must not return to a boil or it will curdle into threads; hold it below about 180F.
"Hard crabs" and "lungs"Hard-shell crabs, not soft-shells; in Ranhofer's New York that would most likely mean blue crab, though the recipe names no species. The "lungs" are the feathery grey gills sometimes called dead man's fingers; scrape them off along with the stomach sac behind the eyes. Twenty-four crabs is a great deal of picking, on the order of 1.5 to 2 lb of picked meat depending on size.
DespumateAn old kitchen term for skimming off the scum that rises from a liquid; in practice the pot is held at a bare simmer, often drawn to one side of the heat, so that scum and fat collect at the edge and can be lifted off. Half an hour at a lazy simmer, skimming as it gathers, is what is meant.
The cross-referencesNo. 195 is a thickened fish stock, No. 90 a pike quenelle forcemeat. Any well-made thickened fish veloute of similar body will stand in; a pike or whiting mousseline works for the quenelles.
CornetA paper piping cone. Three-sixteenths of an inch is a little under 5 mm, so pipe small beads onto a buttered tray and slide them into salted water. Ranhofer says boiling water; in practice water held just under a simmer treats them more gently. They are poached when they float and feel firm, about a minute.
Potato ballsThree-eighths of an inch is about 1 cm, a small Parisienne scoop. Cooking them in a very little white broth rather than water means they finish glazed and seasoned; keep the pan barely covered so nothing dilutes the soup when the garnish goes in.
VolumesThree pints of stock plus the cream and enrichment gives a little under two quarts of finished soup before the garnish goes in; the recipe gives no serving count. Add the shrimp tails and garnish to the tureen or the plates, not to the pot, so they stay intact.
Red pepperCayenne, added before the liaison, as the recipe has it. No quantity is given; start with a scant quarter teaspoon for this volume and correct at the end, when the cream has flattened the heat.

A Little History

Ranhofer named a good many dishes in The Epicurean (1894) for the patrons and public figures who dined at Delmonico's, and Loubat is generally taken to be Joseph Florimond Loubat, the New York collector and philanthropist who was a fixture of the city's moneyed dining world in those decades. The soup itself is a pure expression of the French-American kitchen of the period: a Gulf and Atlantic ingredient, blue crab, treated by the classical route of pounded shellfish meat, fish veloute, and a yolk-and-cream liaison, then dressed with three separate hand-made garnishes that exist mostly to show that the kitchen could produce them. That the crab is pounded rather than kept in lumps is worth noticing; before blenders, the flavour of shellfish was extracted by mortar work and then strained out, so the body of the soup carried the crab and the garnish carried the texture.