🇬🇧 United Kingdom · Scotland
Partan breeScottish crab and rice soup
A Scottish crab soup in which the meat and liquor of the edible crab are enriched with rice cooked in milk, then sieved or blended and finished with cream. Partan is the Scots word for crab and bree means soup or broth.
Origin and history
Partan is the Scots word for the edible crab and bree means broth; the Dictionaries of the Scots Language define partan bree as crab soup. Its earliest dated record there is in Lady Clark of Tillypronie's cookery book (1909), and F. Marian McNeill printed her recipe in The Scots Kitchen (1929). Since rice is not grown in Scotland, Cooksinfo suggests the rice version may date from the late 1700s, when Ayrshire merchant William Fullerton traded rice, and so is probably not very old.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 6 servings
- Total time
- 1 h 15 min
- Hands-on
- 40 min
Ingredients
- 1 large cooked edible crab (about 1 kg), or about 400 g picked crab meat, brown and white mixed; keep the brown meat and any liquor
- 80 gscant 1/2 cup long-grain white rice
- 500 ml2 cups whole milk, for cooking the rice
- 750 ml3 cups light white stock, chicken or fish, unseasoned
- 2 or 3 anchovy fillets, or 1/2 tsp anchovy essence
- 100 mlscant 1/2 cup single or double cream
- salt and white pepper, to taste
- chives, chopped, to garnish
Method
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1. Pick all the meat from the crab. Put the white meat from the claws in a bowl and set aside; keep the brown body meat and liquor with the rest.
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2. Simmer the rice in the milk, stirring now and then, for 20 to 25 minutes, until it is completely soft.
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3. Press the rice, its milk and the brown crab meat through a fine sieve into a clean pan, or blend until very smooth.
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4. Stir in the stock a little at a time until the soup has the thickness of thin cream.
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5. Season with salt, white pepper and the finely chopped anchovy, and heat gently without letting it boil.
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6. Add the reserved claw meat and the cream, warm through for 2 minutes and serve with chives.
Notes
- The old recipe behind this one is Lady Clark of Tillypronie's, as printed in F. Marian McNeill's The Scots Kitchen: the meat of two crabs and 5 to 6 oz of rice boiled in milk, passed through a tammy, then thinned with unseasoned white stock to serve twelve to fourteen. Quantities here are about half of that for the crab and rice. The version we could read gives no amounts for milk and stock, so those follow modern recipes that use roughly a pint of each for one or two crabs, and you should adjust to the thickness you like.
- Cooksinfo says the soup should not boil once the cream is in, and that lobster or frozen or canned crab meat can be used instead. It can be served at room temperature or chilled, though most people prefer it hot. Anchovy essence (about 1/2 tsp) can stand in for the fillets.
- Rice, not a roux, gives the body, which is what separates partan bree from a flour-thickened crab bisque. The Ulster-Scots version on Discover Ulster-Scots thickens a fish-stock soup with diced potato, carrot and celery and tops it with white crab meat; chef Shirley Spear's version (The Caterer) uses crab-shell stock, onions, lemon, Madeira and cream with the rice.
- If you can only find picked crab, buy mostly brown meat, which carries the flavour.
- The soup keeps a day in the fridge; reheat gently.
Adapted from F. Marian McNeill, The Scots Kitchen (Lady Clark of Tillypronie's recipe) and Cooksinfo: Partan bree.
At the festivals
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