No. 304

Crawfish Soup a la Renommee

Potage d'Ecrevisses a la Renommee

Boil a few dozen crawfish in a court bouillon with white wine; drain them, and detach the tails from the bodies, suppressing the tail shells. Keep boiling on the side of the fire, one and a half quarts of thickened white soup stock; put into it the crawfish shells after pounding them, and let the soup despumate for thirty-five minutes, remove all the fat, strain and return it to the saucepan; boil it up again, and stir in cayenne pepper to taste. Take all the meat from the tails and claws of the crawfish, chop up the claws with the parings of the tails and claws, mixing in a little bread panada, red butter, a few raw egg-yolks and red pepper; prepare a small forcemeat with this, and shape it into tiny quenelles, rolling them on a floured table; poach them, then drain and put them in the soup tureen with the crawfish tails cut in two lengthwise. Skim the fat from the soup, thicken it with four egg-yolks and two spoonfuls of puree of white asparagus tops, and also a little raw cream; let the thickening cook without boiling, and finish the soup with a piece of good butter working it vigorously with a whip.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has stock, panada and shellfish butter standing by, so the recipe reads as a sequence of assemblies rather than a start-to-finish method. The hinge is the final liaison: once the egg yolks and cream go in, the soup must never boil or it will curdle into threads.

The liaisonTemper the four yolks with a ladle of hot soup, return it off the heat, and hold the pot between 160 and 180F, stirring, until it coats a spoon. Above about 185F the yolks scramble and no amount of whisking will bring the soup back.
Quantities and yield"A few dozen crawfish" against one and a half quarts of stock suggests three to four dozen whole crawfish, roughly 3-4 lb live weight, yielding perhaps 6-8 oz of picked tail and claw meat. Ranhofer gives no yield; a quart and a half would stretch to about six small first-course portions.
Court bouillonWater with white wine, sliced onion and carrot, a bay leaf, thyme, parsley stems and salt, brought to a boil. Live crawfish need only 3-5 minutes; longer and the tails toughen.
Thickened white soup stockThis is a veloute: white stock (veal or chicken) bound with a blond roux, about 1 oz each butter and flour per pint. It is the body of the soup, not merely a flavouring.
DespumateAn old kitchen term for the slow simmer at the side of the stove during which scum and fat rise to one side of the pot and are lifted off. Set the pan half off the burner so only one edge bubbles, and skim repeatedly across the thirty-five minutes.
Red butterBeurre d'ecrevisses: the pounded shells worked with an equal weight of soft butter, warmed until the butter takes the colour, then strained through muslin and chilled. Lobster or shrimp shell butter substitutes without complaint.
Bread panadaWhite crumb simmered in milk or stock and beaten smooth to a stiff paste, then cooled. It binds the forcemeat; use about a quarter the weight of the picked meat, and keep everything cold or the quenelles will break up in the poaching water.
Poaching the quenellesBarely trembling salted water or light stock, around 175F. Test one first; if it disintegrates, beat a little more panada or another yolk into the mixture.
White asparagus pureeTwo spoonfuls of cooked, sieved white asparagus tips. Green asparagus works but will tint the soup; blanched-white spears or a spoonful of cooked salsify keeps Ranhofer's pale colour.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially his service manual, some 3,500 numbered recipes deep in the classical French idiom he had trained in. Crawfish soups of this kind descend from the French bisque d'ecrevisses, which by the nineteenth century meant a shellfish soup built on pounded shells and finished with an egg-and-cream liaison rather than the older meat-based bisques of the seventeenth century. The garnish here, quenelles moulded from the scraps of claw meat that would otherwise be discarded, is characteristic of a professional kitchen where nothing bought by weight was thrown away. Dish names ending a la renommee - "of renown" - were part of the restaurant's habit of dressing a preparation in a title; Ranhofer's index is thick with such names, many of them honouring patrons, and they tell you more about Delmonico's dining room than about the pot.