No. 572

Crab Butter

Beurre de Crabes

Wash well some crab coral, then pound it in a mortar, adding double its quantity of butter, a dash of cayenne pepper and the juice of two lemons; press it through a sieve.

← No. 571 Cayenne, Chili, Paprika and Sweet Spanish Pe Hot & Cold Butters No. 573 Crawfish Butter →

For the Modern Kitchen

A classical compound butter, one of a run of them in The Epicurean meant as finishing and coloring agents rather than table spreads. The whole thing takes ten minutes once the coral is in hand.

Use coral from cooked crabsThe recipe does not specify, but coral for a compound butter is normally taken from crabs that have already been boiled and picked. Take the coral (the roe and the rich orange-red matter under the shell) from crabs cooked through, not from live or raw ones.
What "coral" meansIn female crabs it is the roe, which turns bright orange-red on cooking; the soft tomalley is sometimes included with it. Either way the yield from a batch of crabs is small, so this is a small-batch preparation.
Double its quantity of butterThe recipe does not say whether by volume or weight; either reading gives a workable ratio. Use softened butter. If the coral measures 3 tablespoons, 6 tablespoons of butter gives a little over half a cup of finished butter.
Go easy on the lemonThe juice of two lemons against a few tablespoons of butter will thin the mixture to a slurry and can split it. Add the juice a teaspoon at a time, tasting, and stop when the flavor lifts. A single lemon is usually more than enough at this scale.
Mortar or machineA small food processor does the pounding faster, but keep it brief and keep the butter cool so it does not turn greasy. The point of the mortar is to break the coral grains down completely, not to whip air into the butter.
The sieve is not optionalCoral contains membrane and grit that a mortar will not resolve. Push the mixture through a fine drum sieve or tamis with a plastic scraper, or a fine chinois; what comes through should be perfectly smooth and evenly colored.
How it was usedWhisked cold into a finished fish sauce or bisque off the heat, spooned onto grilled fish, or spread for canapes. Boiling it will curdle the coral and dull the color, so it goes in at the end.
StorageRoll in parchment and refrigerate no more than two days, or freeze for a month. Shellfish roe is fragile and its flavor turns quickly.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a full transcription of the French professional repertoire for an American kitchen, and it includes a section of beurres composés. Shellfish butters -- crab, crawfish, lobster, shrimp -- existed as much for color as for flavor: the carotenoid pigments in cooked crustacean roe and shell were one way to give a bisque or a sauce its coral blush. The neighboring entries show the logic of the arrangement, a small palette of tinted and seasoned fats to be dropped into a sauce at the last moment. The technique survives largely unchanged in classical French kitchens, where lobster shells and coral are still pounded into butter for beurre de homard.