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Crabs, St. Laurent
Heat one ounce melted butter in a saucepan, add two ounces flour, stir well while cooking for two minutes, then add one pint hot milk; thoroughly stir until it comes to a boil and add one pound fresh crab meat. Season with one and a half teaspoons salt, two saltspoons cayenne, one level teaspoon ground English mustard and one tablespoon Worcestershire sauce. Mix all well together while cooking for two minutes and then let gently cook for ten minutes more. Add three egg yolks, briskly mix with a wooden spoon while cooking for a minute, and finally add one tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese; mix well again, transfer to a dish and let cool off.
Prepare six pieces toast two inches square and one-quarter inch thick. Equally divide the preparation on top of each toast and nicely shape dome-like with the blade of a knife. Arrange the toasts on a tin and sprinkle two tablespoons Parmesan cheese over all. Set to bake in the oven for eight minutes, or till a nice golden colour. Remove, dress on a dish with a folded napkin, decorate with six pieces lemon and a little parsley greens and serve.
A stiff crab béchamel, chilled, domed onto toast squares and browned — essentially a hot canapé rather than a supper dish. Two details decide whether it works: how thick you take the base, and how cold it is before you shape it.
- Chill it properlyThe instruction to "let cool off" is the hinge. Warm mixture will slump off the toast in the oven; spread it on a plate, cover, and refrigerate an hour or more until it is firm enough to shape with a knife blade and hold a dome.
- The roux is deliberately heavyTwo ounces flour (about 1/2 cup) to one pint milk gives a thick sauce, thicker than a pouring béchamel, and it stiffens further once the crab and yolks go in. That is correct here — it is the binder. Cook it out the full two minutes before the milk goes in so it does not taste pasty.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons cayenne is 1/2 teaspoon. With the mustard and Worcestershire that is genuinely hot; start with half if you are unsure.
- English mustardGround English mustard is dry mustard powder of the Colman's type, not prepared mustard from a jar. It is sharper and drier than yellow American mustard; use the same volume of any dry mustard powder.
- Egg yolks off the heatAdd the yolks with the pan barely bubbling and stir hard, as written. A minute is enough to thicken and set them; longer at a boil and the sauce will curdle into grains.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Eight minutes to a golden top implies a hot oven; around 400–425F on an upper rack is a reasonable modern reading, or finish under the broiler for the last minute if the cheese is stubborn.
- Crab meatOne pound of picked crab meat, lump or backfin. Squeeze out excess liquid before it goes in, and pick through for shell and cartilage; refrigerated pasteurised crab is the practical modern equivalent of "fresh."
- YieldSix pieces, which is one apiece as a first course. The toast should be cut and dried out slightly beforehand so it does not go soft under the crab.
- The napkin"Dress on a dish with a folded napkin" is conventional period service for such toasts; the linen is usually said to absorb grease and keep them from sliding. Skip it without loss.
The International Cook Book (1906) is by Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its habit of hanging a French-sounding surname on a dish — St. Laurent, Bordelaise, à la Something — reflects the restaurant convention of the day, in which a named garnish or preparation was a shorthand for cooks rather than a claim about origin. The dish itself is thoroughly Anglo-American under its French label: Worcestershire sauce, English mustard powder and cayenne are a common seasoning trio of nineteenth-century deviled crab, and the technique of binding shellfish in a very stiff béchamel, chilling it, then shaping and browning it is the same one that produces croquettes and crab cakes. Serving it on small squares of toast places it with the hot savouries and canapés that opened a formal meal, or closed one in the British manner.