CRAY-FISH, or CRAW-FISH. See CANCER. The flesh of cray-fish is cooling, moistening, and adapted to nourish such as labour under atrophies. There are various methods of preparing these animals; they may be either boiled or fried, and then taken out of
of their shells, and made up in variety of dishes: but no parts of them are eatable except their claws and tails. Preparations and broths of cray-fish are celebrated not only for a palatable aliment, but also for answering some medicinal intentions, as being of a moistening quality, and sheathing up and correcting acrimony. The broth is prepared of four or five eraw-fish, which having their heads cut off, and their intestines extracted, are to be bruised and boiled in the broth of flesh or poultry, until they become sufficiently red: after which the liquor is to be strained off and seasoned, as the case may require. This broth may be rendered still more medicinal by the addition of herbs, snails, or other substances; according to the intention of the physician. Their flesh is accounted best in the summer months.
The delicate flavour of these fish depends in a great measure on their food. When they have well-tasted food, their flesh preserves the relish of it: but when they feed on other things, they are often rendered of no value, by the flavour communicated to their flesh by them. There are great quantities of these fish in the river Obra, on the borders of Silesia; but the people find them scarce eatable, because of a bitter aromatic flavour, very disagreeable in food. It has been since observed, that the calamus aromaticus grows in vast abundance on the banks of that river, and that these creatures feed very greedily upon its roots. These have a very remarkable bitterness mixed with their aromatic flavour, while fresh, which goes off very much in the drying; and on comparing the taste of these roots with that of the cray-fish, there remains no doubt of the one being owing to the other.
They abound in the river Don in Muscovy, where they are laid in heaps to putrefy; after which the stones called crab's eyes are picked out. These animals are very greedy of flesh, and flock in great numbers about carcasses thrown into the water where they are, and never leave it while any remains. They also feed on dead frogs when they come into their way. In Switzerland there are some cray-fish which are red while they are alive, and others bluish. Some kinds of them also will never become red, even by boiling, but continue blackish.
The cray-fish discharges itself of its stomach, and, as M. Geoffroy thinks, of its intestines too. These, as they putrefy and dissolve, serve for food to the animal; during the time of the reformation, the old stomach seems to be the first food the new one digests. It is only at this time that the stones are found called crab's eyes; they begin to be formed when the old stomach is destroyed, and are afterwards wrapped up in the new one, where they decrease by degrees till they entirely disappear.