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Lobster A La Newberg
Half pint of cream. Half pint of sherry. Half cup of butter.
Salt, white pepper, cayenne to taste. Let cream come to a boil, then stir in the eggs well beaten; add salt and pepper to taste-then sherry. Have the lobster cut into small pieces; put into sauce; let come to a boil -Mrs. A. F., New York. and serve.
This is a chafing-dish standard recorded in shorthand: the contributor gives no quantities and the printed text has the attribution line dropped into the middle of the last sentence. Treat it as a method to be scaled rather than a formula.
- Working proportionsThe original lists no amounts at all. As a workable starting point, about 1 cup heavy cream, 3 egg yolks, 2 tablespoons sherry and the meat of two 1 1/4-lb lobsters will serve four; printed versions of the period vary a good deal, and anything more precise would be invention on our part.
- The instruction that mattersOnce the beaten eggs go into the hot cream the mixture must not actually boil, whatever the text says, or it scrambles into curds. Hold it below a simmer and stir until it coats the spoon.
- "The eggs"Many Newburg recipes of the period specify yolks only. Whole eggs set firmer and grainier and give a paler sauce.
- Adding the lobsterThe lobster is already cooked, so it only needs warming through — a minute or two. The second "let come to a boil" is what turns lobster meat rubbery and stringy.
- SherryDry or medium sherry, not cream sherry. The recipe adds it before the lobster and then boils; better added off the heat at the end, since hard boiling drives off the aroma that is the whole point of the dish.
- Cayenne and white pepperBoth are there for heat without black specks in a pale sauce. Start at a pinch and add to taste.
- ServingNo accompaniment is named. Newburg was commonly served on toast points, in puff-pastry shells, or over plain boiled rice. Serve it the moment it thickens; it does not hold or reheat well.
Lobster à la Newburg — spelled "Newberg" here, as it often was — is generally traced to Delmonico's in New York in the 1870s, where it is said to have been named for a customer, the sea captain Ben Wenberg, and then renamed by rearranging his surname after the two men quarrelled. That story is traditional rather than documented, but the dish's association with Delmonico's and with fashionable New York dining is not. By 1900 Newburg had also become a staple of the domestic chafing dish, cooked at the table for late suppers and card parties; canned lobster made it possible far from the coast. The sauce formula — cream thickened with yolks, sharpened with cayenne and sherry — was applied to crab, shrimp and even hard-boiled eggs, and "à la Newburg" came to mean the sauce rather than the shellfish.