Home › Lobsters and Lobsters › Lobsters and Lobsters: Francisco
Lobsters and Lobsters: Francisco
Lobster, served cold with mayonnaise, or broiled live lobster are most frequently called for, and while they are both excellent, we find so many other ways of preparing this crustacean that we rarely take the common variety of lobster dishes into consideration. Probably nowhere in San Francisco could one get lobster better served than in the Old Delmonico restaurant of the days before the fire. A book could be written about this restaurant and then all would not be told for all its secrets can never be known.
In New York City they have what they are pleased to call "Lobster Palaces," but there is not a restaurant in that great metropolis that could approach the Delmonico of San Francisco in its splendid service and its cuisine arrangements; neither could they approach the romance that always surrounded the O'Farrell street restaurant. It was here that most magnificent dinners were arranged; it was here that extraordinary dishes were concocted by chefs of world-wide fame; it was here that Lobster a la Newberg reached its highest perfection, and this is the recipe that was followed when it was prepared in the Delmonico:
LOBSTER A LA NEWBERG One pound of lobster meat, one teaspoonful of butter, onehalf pint of cream, yolks of four eggs, one wine glass of sherry, lobster fat. Three hours before cooking pour the sherry over the lobster meat and let it stand until ready to cook. Heat the butter and stir in with the lobster and wine, then place this in a stewpan, or chafing dish, and cook for eight minutes. Have the yolks of eggs well beaten and add to them the cream and lobster fat, stir well and then stir in a teaspoonful of flour. Put this in a double boiler and let cook until thick, stirring constantly. When this is cooked pour it over the lobster and let all cook together for three minutes. Serve in a chafing dish with thin slices of dry toast.
KING OF One has to come to San Francisco to partake of the king of shell fish-the mammoth Pacific crab. I say "come to San Francisco" advisedly, for while the crab is found all along the coast it is prepared nowhere so deliciously as in San Francisco. Of course our friends in Portland will SHELL FISH take exception to this, but the fact remains that nowhere except in San Francisco have so many restaurants become famous because of the way they prepare the crab. The Pacific crab is peculiar, and while it has not the gigantic claws such as are to be seen on those in the Parisian and London markets, its meat is much more delicate in flavor, and the dishes of crab prepared by artists of the gastronomic profession in San Francisco are more savory than those found elsewhere. In the pre-fire days there were many places which paid especial attention to the cooking of the crab, among them being the Cobweb Palace, previously mentioned, and Gobey's. Gobey ran one of those places which was not in good repute, consequently when ladies went there they were usually veiled and slipped in through an alley, but the enticement of Gobey's crab stew was too much for conventionality and his little private rooms were always full.
The chapter is mostly reminiscence, but the Delmonico formula for Lobster à la Newberg in the middle of it is a complete working recipe. It is a sherry-scented egg-and-cream sauce that lives or dies on temperature control.
- The hinge: never let the sauce boilYolk-and-cream custards begin to set and can break somewhere around 180F, and the teaspoon of flour only buys a little margin. Cook the custard in the double boiler over water that is barely trembling, and after it goes onto the lobster keep the pan off direct heat — the final "three minutes together" is a warming through, not a simmer.
- Lobster meat means cooked meatThe recipe assumes picked meat from a boiled or steamed lobster. Whole lobsters yield roughly a quarter of their weight in meat, so a pound of picked meat means something on the order of three or four 1 1/4 lb lobsters.
- Lobster fatThis is the tomalley, the soft green liver from the body cavity, plus any coral (roe) from a hen lobster. It is what colours and enriches the sauce. If your lobster comes pre-picked you will not have it; the dish still works, but it will be paler and thinner-tasting.
- A wine glassAbout 2 fluid ounces in period usage — a quarter cup, not a modern stemmed pour. Use a dry amontillado or oloroso rather than a sweet cream sherry.
- The three-hour steepMarinate the meat covered in the refrigerator, not on the counter. Cooked shellfish held at room temperature for three hours is exactly the window Vibrio and Staphylococcus like.
- "One teaspoonful of butter"Unusually little for a pound of lobster; a tablespoon is closer to what the sauce wants and does no harm.
- The flourClassic Newburg is thickened with yolks alone. The single teaspoon of flour here is insurance against curdling — stir it into the cold cream and yolks before heating so it disperses, or you will get lumps.
- Yield and servingServes about four as a first course, two as a main. The dry toast matters: the sauce is loose and rich, and croutons or pastry shells are the obvious alternatives.
Lobster Newburg is generally traced to Delmonico's in New York in the 1870s and to a sea captain named Ben Wenberg, who is said to have shown the kitchen the dish and then quarrelled with the management, after which "Wenberg" was shuffled into "Newberg" or "Newburg" on the card. The spelling has never settled, and this book uses the older "Newberg." What is being claimed here, though, is San Francisco's own: the Old Delmonico on O'Farrell Street, which vanished in the fires following the April 1906 earthquake. The surrounding pages are just as revealing about local taste: the writer treats the mammoth Pacific crab, not lobster, as the real king of Pacific shellfish, and remembers Gobey's crab stew as a dish respectable women would enter through an alley to eat.