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Crayfish, Bordelaise
Procure thirty-six large fresh crayfish and keep them in running water for one hour. Drain, remove the intestines by pinching the extreme end of the central fin, place in a saucepan with a quart cold water, a gill good vinegar, teaspoon salt, bunch parsley, sliced onion, sprig thyme, bay leaf and two cloves. Cover the pan, set on the fire, and as soon as it comes to boil drain on a sieve.
Heat in a saucepan a tablespoon butter, add six finely chopped, sound shallots and the red parts of three new carrots finely chopped up, then gently brown for five minutes. Add the crayfish with a quarter pint claret and two gills demi-glace. Season with a half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper, cover the pan and let cook for twenty minutes. Add one finely chopped bean garlic, one teaspoon finely chopped parsley, and half teaspoon finely chopped tarragon leaves, toss well and let cook for ten minutes, dress on a hot, deep dish and serve.
A Bordeaux-style braise of whole crayfish in red wine and demi-glace. The measurements are Edwardian restaurant shorthand, and the total cooking time is the one thing worth reconsidering.
- The unitsA gill is half a cup, so the vinegar in the blanching liquid is 1/2 cup and the two gills of demi-glace are 1 cup. A quarter pint of claret is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, making the pepper roughly 1/2 teaspoon.
- Cooking timeThirty minutes of covered braising, after a blanch, will leave the tail meat firm to the point of cottony. Crayfish tails are cooked through within two or three minutes of boiling. If you want the flavour of the shells in the sauce without ruining the meat, build the sauce with the crayfish, then pull them out early and return them at the end to heat through.
- "Bean garlic"An awkward rendering of the French gousse d'ail, gousse meaning a pod or husk: one clove of garlic, not a head.
- ClaretThe long-standing English term for red Bordeaux. Any dry, medium-bodied red works; something tannic and oaky will fight the shellfish.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock, and the backbone of the dish. Good commercial demi-glace concentrate or a hard-reduced beef or veal stock will do; a bouillon cube will not, as it lacks the gelatin that gives the sauce body.
- "The red parts of three new carrots"The outer flesh only, cut away from the paler fibrous core, for a fine, sweet mirepoix.
- Buying and purgingCrayfish must be alive going into the pot. The hour in running water purges grit; the pinch-and-pull at the tail fin removes the dark intestinal vein, which is bitter. The recipe does this before the crayfish go into the blanching liquid, while they are still raw.
- ServingThirty-six crayfish is three to four servings as a course on its own, more as part of a larger meal. Serve in a deep dish with the sauce spooned over, finger bowls and bread alongside — the shells are meant to be worked at by hand.
Crayfish à la bordelaise is a set piece of French restaurant cooking: freshwater crayfish braised with shallot, red Bordeaux and brown sauce, resting on the same shallot-and-claret foundation as sauce bordelaise, which takes its name from the Bordeaux region. Écrevisses were plentiful in French rivers through the nineteenth century and appear often in grand-service menus — as a garnish, a bisque, a butter, or, as here, whole in their shells for diners to dismantle at table. Their appearance in a book called The International Cook Book reflects how thoroughly American hotel and club cooking of the period was conducted in French: the vocabulary that survives untranslated in this recipe — demi-glace, the gill, the "bean" of garlic — belongs to a professional kitchen writing for other professionals. Native European crayfish populations were devastated by crayfish plague from the later nineteenth century onward, which is part of why the dish is now more often met with imported or American species.