Home › The Principles of Cookery › LOBSTER SOUP (another way)
LOBSTER SOUP (another way)
Pick the meat from the claws, body, and tail of a medium-sized freshly-boiled lobster, cut it into small squares, and put it aside until wanted. Dissolve two ounces of fresh butter in a stewpan, put in with it a carrot, an onion, four sticks of celery, and three shallots, all sliced, together with a bunch of parsley, a small sprig of thyme, and a piece of lemon-rind. Turn these about in the butter for four or five minutes, then mix well with them six ounces of rice flour, add gradually three pints of good stock, and the bruised shell of the lobster. When the soup is on the point of boiling, stir in with it the spawn, which should be well bruised in a mortar. Strain the soup through a tamis, return it again to the pan, and skim it thoroughly. Add a glass of light wine, half a tea-spoonful of the essence of anchovy, a tea-spoonful of Worcester sauce, a tea-spoonful of strained lemon-juice, a little cayenne, and, if required, a pinch of salt. Fry some small quenelles (see LOBSTER QUENELLES), put them into the tureen with the pieces of lobster meat, pour on the soup, and serve immediately. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A classic bisque in all but name: shell-flavoured stock, thickened with rice flour rather than a roux, finished with coral and a short list of Victorian bottled seasonings. Most of the work is in the straining.
- Imperial pintsThree imperial pints is 60 imperial fl oz, about 1.7 litres (a little over 7 US cups). Using US pints gives roughly a fifth less liquid, and so a thicker, more strongly seasoned soup.
- Six ounces of rice flourThat is a heavy hand by current standards — it will produce a soup close to a thin porridge, in the Victorian taste for substantial thickened potages. Three ounces gives a body most people now expect, and you can always add more slaked in cold stock.
- TamisA tamis is a drum sieve of fine woven cloth or mesh; the soup is pushed through with a wooden mushroom or the back of a ladle. A fine chinois with a ladle, or a conical strainer lined with muslin, does the same job. Do not skip it: the bruised shell must be caught.
- The spawnThe "spawn" is the coral, the dark green roe found only in hen lobsters, which turns coral-red on cooking. Most lobsters sold today are sorted by size rather than sex and many are cocks, so you may have none; the soup still works, but it will be paler. Pound the coral with a little soft butter before stirring it in, and keep the soup below the boil at that point or it will granulate.
- Do not let it boil after the coral goes inDo not let it boil hard after the coral goes in -- The recipe has you add the spawn "when the soup is on the point of boiling", which suggests gentle heat: coral contains protein that sets much as egg yolk does and can granulate into gritty specks in a rolling boil.
- A glass of light wineA wineglassful, usually reckoned in Victorian cookery at about 2 fl oz (some sources up to a half-gill, 2.5 fl oz); the measure was not standardised. "Light wine" here means an unfortified wine — a dry white such as hock or Chablis — rather than sherry or Madeira.
- Essence of anchovyA thin, salty Victorian bottled extract. Anchovy paste thinned with a spoonful of stock, or colatura di alici, stands in for it; half a teaspoon of paste is about right, and salt at the very end once the anchovy and Worcester sauce have gone in.
- QuenellesOptional; the soup is complete without them, and the cross-reference is to a separate forcemeat recipe not reproduced here. If you make them, fry them just before serving, and warm the diced lobster meat in the tureen with the hot soup rather than boiling it, which toughens it.
- YieldThe original says five or six, and that holds — as a first course rather than a meal.
Cassell's gives this as an alternative to its first lobster soup, and the difference is instructive: this version thickens with rice flour rather than breadcrumbs or a flour-and-butter roux. The technique — pounding the shells and coral, drawing the flavour out through butter and stock, then forcing everything through a tamis — follows the method of the French *bisque*, a word which in the seventeenth century could denote a rich pounded soup of crayfish or of pigeon rather than the shellfish purée it now names. Essence of anchovy and Worcester sauce were common in the late-nineteenth-century English store cupboard, and their presence in a dish otherwise built on French method is characteristic of the period's cookery. The costing is given as 2s. 6d. for five or six people.