No. 452

Crab Sauce

Sauce aux Crabes

Have a pint of white sauce (No. 562), in a saucepan, add to it a pinch of cayenne pepper and the same quantity of ground mace, also two ounces of crab meat cut in dice, or if possible some oyster crabs blanched in their own oyster juice, and drained.

← No. 451 Colbert, English and Tarragon Sauces Hot Sauces No. 453 Crawfish Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have a quart of finished white sauce standing by, which is the only real obstacle here. Once you do, this is a five-minute finishing sauce for poached fish.

The white sauce (No. 562)Ranhofer's white sauce is a roux-based sauce; how it is moistened is set out at No. 562, which is not reproduced here. For a fish sauce, make 2 cups from 2 tablespoons each butter and flour, 1 3/4 cups fish or light chicken stock, and a splash of cream, simmered until it coats a spoon.
A pintAmerican measure, so 2 cups. That yields enough sauce for six to eight portions of poached fish; the whole quantity of crab meat is only 2 ounces, so the crab reads as perfume rather than substance.
Ground maceMace is the outer covering of the nutmeg seed, warmer and less sweet than nutmeg itself. Ground mace loses its aroma fast; if the jar in the cupboard is old, use a smaller pinch of freshly grated nutmeg instead.
Oyster crabsThe preferred garnish is Pinnotheres ostreum, the soft pea-sized crab that lives inside a live oyster. Today they are essentially a byproduct of shucking rather than something you can buy, and you are unlikely to see them unless you open oysters yourself. Ordinary lump crab meat, picked over and diced, is the practical substitute.
Blanching themTwenty to thirty seconds in the oyster liquor is enough. Whole oyster crabs are almost entirely shell-thin and go to mush with any real cooking; drain them and keep the liquor, which is worth stirring into the sauce.
Do not boil after the crab goes inThis is the hinge. Cooked crab meat added to a simmering sauce turns stringy and gives up water, thinning the sauce and dulling its sweetness. Bring the sauce to the point of simmering, pull it off the heat, then fold the crab in and hold it warm.
SeasoningThe recipe gives cayenne and mace but no salt; presumably the base sauce is already seasoned. Taste after the crab and any oyster liquor are in, since both carry salt of their own.
ServingSpoon it over poached sole, turbot, halibut or bass, or use it to nap fish quenelles or a timbale. It does not hold well: make it as the fish comes out of its poaching liquid.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its hot sauce chapter works like a reference table -- each sauce a short variation keyed by number to a handful of mother sauces. The oyster crab that Ranhofer prefers here was a genuine New York luxury of the period: tiny, soft-shelled, harvested incidentally by oyster shuckers along the Atlantic coast, and served fried by the plateful in the city's fish houses when enough could be gathered. Their appeal was partly scarcity, since it took a great many oysters to yield a portion, and partly that they taste of oyster liquor as much as of crab. Ranhofer's insistence on blanching them in their own oyster juice rather than water is characteristic of the book's method: nothing that carries flavor gets thrown away.