No. 345

Shrimp Soup, Mignon

Potage aux Crevettes Mignon

Keep boiling on the side of the fire one quart and a half of thickened fish stock (No 195). Break off the tails from a hundred cooked red shrimps, pick the meat from the shells, trim them and pound the parings with one-third of the picked tails, selecting the smallest ones for this; also a piece of butter and four egg-yolks, then press all through a sieve; keep the puree in a cool place, also the remainder of the picked tails cut in small dice. Put into the boiling soup half of the pounded shells; with a smallest size root spoon, five-sixteenth of an inch, cut out some very small cooked truffle balls, and set these into another small saucepan; divide into two equal parts the value of four or five spoonfuls of raw fish quenelle forcemeat (No. 90); into one mix some Breton carmine, leaving the other half white; place these two forcemeats separately into a paper cornet, and push them through on to a buttered baking sheet to form beads; poach them separately in salted water, drain and lay them in the soup tureen. From one quart of shelled green peas select one to two gills of the smallest and tenderest, and boil them in water; when drained, add them to the quenelles in the soup tureen. After the soup is well despumated, remove all its grease and strain it through a tammy; return it to a clean saucepan, let it boil, adding to it three spoonfuls of Madeira wine; two minutes later, thicken it with the shrimp puree and cook this thickening without letting it boil. Remove, and finish with a dash of cayenne pepper and a piece of red butter. Pour the soup into the tureen, add to it the shrimp tails, butter and truffles, and serve at once.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot already going and cross-references half the book. Stripped down, this is a fish velouté finished with a shrimp-shell-and-egg-yolk liaison, garnished with three separate poached or boiled elements. Read the whole thing through before starting, because everything but the soup itself is made in advance.

The hinge: the liaison must not boilThe shrimp puree carries four egg yolks. Once it goes into the soup, hold the pot below a simmer — around 180F — and stir until it coats the spoon. A boil curdles the yolks and the soup turns grainy and separated with no way back.
Quantities and vesselsA gill is half a cup, so one to two gills of peas is 1/2 to 1 cup, picked from a quart in the pod. A "spoonful" in The Epicurean generally means a tablespoon. A hundred cooked red shrimps implies small ones; the weight in the shell depends on the size you find. The recipe uses both the meat and the shells, so buy them whole.
Root spoonA five-sixteenth-inch root spoon is the smallest melon baller. The truffle balls are pure decoration; a whole small black truffle is the only way to cut them, and canned truffle peelings will not do.
Despumate and tammyDespumating is skimming the scum and fat that rise as the stock holds at a bare simmer at the side of the stove. A tammy was a felted cloth; a fine chinois with a ladle pressed against it, or a chinois lined with damp muslin, does the same work.
Breton carmine and red butterBreton carmine appears to have been a proprietary carmine (cochineal-based) coloring of the sort used for tinting forcemeats. Red butter is a shellfish butter — shells pounded with butter, warmed and strained — supplying both color and flavor at the finish. Modern kitchens more often tint forcemeat with tomato paste or a little sweet paprika.
The bead quenellesPiped from a paper cornet, these are pea-sized. Poach them in barely trembling salted water for under a minute; at that size they set almost instantly and toughen if left. Poach the tinted and the white batches separately or the color bleeds.
Fish stock No. 195The base is Ranhofer's thickened fish stock — in effect a fish velouté. A good modern fish fumet worked into a light white roux, at 1 1/2 quarts finished volume, is the equivalent.
YieldA quart and a half of soup plus garnish will serve about six as a first course. The quenelles and peas wait in the tureen and the soup is poured over them; the shrimp tails, butter and truffles go in after the soup, as written, so nothing overcooks.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organized less as a cookbook than as a professional reference: over a thousand numbered soups, sauces and garnishes that call on one another by number. Mignon here simply means dainty or delicate, and the name is earned by the scale of the garnish — pea-sized quenelles in two colors, melon-balled truffles, the smallest peas picked out of a quart, diced shrimp tails — all of it labor performed so that a spoonful looks composed. That kind of miniature garnish work descends from the French service Ranhofer trained in before emigrating, and it was exactly what a Gilded Age restaurant sold: not scarce ingredients so much as visible hours of skilled hands. The shell-and-yolk liaison, meanwhile, is old thrift dressed up — the parings and smallest tails, which no diner would want to see, pounded through a sieve to thicken and flavor the very soup they came from.