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Bisque of Hard Crabs
Slice very fine one medium carrot, one medium onion, one branch celery, two leeks, two branches parsley and half clove sound garlic. Place these in a saucepan with one ounce butter and gently cook them for ten minutes, mixing well meantime. Have six raw hard crabs, well cleaned; pound them (shells and all) in a mortar to a fine pulp, then add to the pan. Stir well and cook for ten minutes; add two and a half ounces flour. Stir well, moisten with one quart hot milk and one and a half quarts white broth. Season with a light tablespoon salt and two saltspoons cayenne pepper. Slowly boil for forty-five minutes. Strain the bisque through a cheesecloth into another saucepan, set it on the range and let come to a boil. Dilute one egg yolk into half gill cold cream and add it to the bisque; briskly mix with a whisk; add half ounce butter, mix again for one minute. Pour into a hot tureen and serve with bread croutons.
A classic shell-pounded bisque, built as a roux soup and finished with a yolk-and-cream liaison. Two things decide whether it works: how finely the shells are broken, and how carefully the finish is handled.
- The finish is the hingeOnce the yolk and cream go in, the bisque must not return to a boil or the yolk will curdle into threads. Add the liaison off direct heat, whisk hard, then warm gently just to serving temperature.
- Hard crabsHard-shell crabs, most likely blue crabs, sold live or freshly killed, as opposed to soft-shells. Six medium blue crabs would be roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb whole. Clean them first: pull the apron and top shell, discard the gills and stomach sac, and keep any orange roe, which enriches the soup.
- Pounding the shellsA mortar is not required; a sturdy food processor will reduce cleaned crab to a coarse paste in a minute or two, and a heavy rolling pin on the shells first helps. The point is surface area for extraction, not smoothness — everything is strained out later.
- StrainingCheesecloth alone lets fine shell grit through. Strain through a fine mesh sieve first, pressing hard on the solids, then again through damp cheesecloth or a coffee filter for a clean bisque.
- Old measuresA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of cream is 1/4 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, making two saltspoons of cayenne roughly 1/2 teaspoon — assertive but not extreme in 2 1/2 quarts of liquid; start with half if you are unsure. Two and a half ounces of flour is about 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon.
- White brothAn unsalted light stock, veal or chicken, with no browning. Use low-sodium stock and taste before adding the full tablespoon of salt, which was calculated for an unseasoned base.
- Cooking and yieldForty-five minutes at a bare simmer, stirred often -- a flour-thickened soup with solids in it scorches on the bottom easily. It starts with 2 1/2 quarts of liquid and finishes with somewhat less after reduction and straining, enough for six to eight first-course servings.
Bisque in the French repertoire meant a shellfish soup thickened with the pounded shells themselves — crayfish, lobster, shrimp or crab — and often with rice or, as here, a roux; the smooth tomato-cream purees of vegetables that now carry the name are a later borrowing. The word's origin is unsettled, though it is often traced to the Bay of Biscay. What makes this version American is the crab: hard-shell blue crabs from the Chesapeake and the Gulf were cheap and abundant in the early twentieth century, and cookbooks of the period slot them into French formulas that would otherwise have called for crayfish. Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, wrote for exactly that kitchen — continental method, local shellfish — and the recipe here calls for pounding in a mortar and straining through cheesecloth.