No. 661

Crawfish Garnishing

Garniture d'Ecrevisses

Whole crawfish are sometimes used combined with other garnishings, but they are considered more as decorations than otherwise; in any case they must first be cooked in a court-bouillon (No. 38), and the shells removed from the tails, without detaching the meat from the bodies, or leave the shells on.

How to Cook Them.—Wash the crawfish, changing the water several times during the operation; suppress the small vein found in the middle underneath the fins, at the tail end then lay the fish in a saucepan, and season with salt, mignonette, vinegar, or white wine, sliced onions, branches of parsley, thyme, and bay leaf. When they are cooked, break off the small side claws, and remove the shell or not as desired. They can now be trussed as shown in Fig. 506, for skewers. The crawfish tails after being picked out of their shells, are used as garnishings, sauteing them in butter and seasoning with salt, pepper, fine herbs and fish glaze (No. 399). The body shells stuffed with forcemeat (No. 90) are used for soups.

← No. 660 Connetable Garnishing Garnishings No. 662 Demidoff Garnishing →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is describing crawfish as decoration first and food second, but the cooking method here is sound and complete. The only real trap is time in the pot.

Cook them brieflyCrawfish are done in about 3 to 5 minutes once the liquid is at a simmer — the shells turn bright red and the tails curl. Ranhofer's "when they are cooked" assumes a cook who is watching; left in hot liquid they turn cottony and the tail meat shrinks away from the shell.
Court-bouillonHe cross-references his No. 38, but the version he spells out here — salted water with vinegar or white wine, sliced onion, parsley stems, thyme and bay — is all you need. Note that he has the crawfish laid in the pan and seasoned there rather than dropped into already-boiling liquid.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked white or black peppercorns, not ground pepper. A rough crush in a mortar or under a pan bottom gives the right texture; it perfumes the broth without clouding it.
"Suppress the small vein"This is the dark intestinal thread running down the tail. Pinch and pull the middle tail fin before cooking and it comes out with it. Skipping it leaves a muddy note, particularly in pond-raised crawfish.
Buy them liveCrawfish spoil fast once dead, and the tail meat goes mushy. Keep them cold and damp until cooking, and discard any that are limp. He directs washing in several changes of water, which is still worth doing for anything not farm-raised.
Fish glazeHis No. 399 is fish fumet reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. A tablespoon of reduced fish or shellfish stock does the same work in the sauté: it gives the tails gloss and a savory edge. Bottled fish sauce is not a substitute.
Trussing for skewersFig. 506 shows a decorative trussing for mounting the crawfish on skewers; the figure itself is not reproduced here. Purely a garnish for a formal service; nobody expects it now, and the tails are better eaten.
Quantities and yieldNo amounts are given because this is a garnish entry. Reckon 3 to 4 crawfish per plate as decoration, or about 6 lb of whole live crawfish to yield roughly a pound of picked tail meat for a sauté or filling.

A Little History

This is one of the garnishing entries from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous professional reference he compiled from his decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. In French grande cuisine, écrevisses — freshwater crayfish — were a luxury garnish rather than a meal: shells stuffed with forcemeat, tails bedded in a sauce, whole specimens skewered upright around a dish as a crown. The tradition is bound up with the Nantua style of Bugey in eastern France, where crayfish butter and crayfish sauce were built on the same animal. Ranhofer's American kitchen would have drawn on native species rather than the European crayfish then already declining from plague; his brisk tone about removing shells "or not as desired" is the voice of a man who knew that half the point of the whole crawfish was that the guests could see it.