Home › Fish, Eggs, and Sauces › Crabs, Style of Saint Lawrence
Crabs, Style of Saint Lawrence
Saint Lawrence was that early martyr who was broiled for his faith, and French cooks commemorate his suffering somewhat strangely in naming and cooking this dish.
Chop 3/4 pound of shelled crabs, add 1/2 pint of white stock, a tablespoonful of sherry or lemon juice, salt, pepper, and a tablespoonful of grated cheese. Cook for 10 minutes, pour over slices of toast, and add more cheese, on top. Brown with a salamander or in a very hot oven.
A gratin of crab on toast, written for a cook who already had stock on the stove and a salamander in the fire. Two things need attention: the liquid, and the browning.
- The hinge: reduce before you pourHalf a pint of stock to three-quarters of a pound of crab is a loose, soupy mixture, and untreated it will turn the toast to pulp within a minute. Simmer it down until it coats a spoon, or thicken it with a small roux or a spoonful of cream, before it goes near the bread.
- Half a pintThe measure is ambiguous: an imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, a US half-pint 8 fl oz. Either is workable here since you are reducing anyway; start at 8 oz and add if the mixture tightens too fast.
- White stockA pale unbrowned stock, veal or chicken, unsalted and unseasoned. A light chicken stock is the closest modern equivalent; fish stock also suits crab, though it pushes the dish further from the original.
- Shelled crabsPicked crabmeat, three-quarters of a pound of it. Fold it in near the end rather than boiling it for the full ten minutes.
- Ten minutesThat time belongs to the sauce, not the crab. Crabmeat sold today is already cooked, and ten minutes of simmering shreds it and drives out its sweetness. Reduce the stock alone, then warm the crab through in it for a minute or two.
- Salamander, and "a very hot oven"A salamander was an iron disc heated red and held above the dish to brown the top; the modern equivalent is an overhead grill or broiler at full heat, three to four inches from the surface. If you use the oven instead, "very hot" means 475-500F, but the grill is faster and gives a better crust.
- The cheeseUnspecified. Grated Gruyere or a dry Cheddar melts and browns well; Parmesan alone gives colour but little pull. Keep the quantity modest inside the sauce and be more generous on top, where it does the work.
- Yield and timingProbably enough for about four slices of toast, so two people as a supper dish or four as a first course, though the recipe does not say. Assemble and brown at the last moment; it does not hold.
Saint Lawrence, a deacon of Rome executed in 258, is traditionally said to have been roasted on a gridiron, and the same tradition credits him with telling his executioners to turn him over as he was done on one side. Whether or not the gridiron is historical, it became his emblem, and it made him the patron of cooks. The device used for that heat, the salamander, carries its own fire-creature mythology, and remained standard equipment in professional kitchens long after domestic ranges had gained broilers. The recipe itself is of a familiar type: shellfish bound in a stock-based sauce, set on toast, gratineed with cheese, a formula that also produced the various lobster and crab "rarebits".