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Lobster Soup
Pick the meat from a large freshly-boiled hen lobster, cut it into squares, and set it in a cool place until wanted. Take away the brown fin and the bag in the head, and beat the small claws, the fins, and the chin in a mortar. Put them into a stewpan, and with them a small onion, a carrot, a bunch of sweet herbs, a stick of celery, the toasted crust of a French roll, a small strip of lemon-rind, a tea-spoonful of salt, a pinch of cayenne, and a quart of good unseasoned stock. Simmer all gently together for three-quarters of an hour, then press the soup through a tamis, and return it again to the saucepan. Pound the coral to a smooth paste, press it through a sieve, and mix a little salt, pepper, and cayenne with it. Stir these into the soup, add the pieces of flesh, and when quite hot, without boiling, serve. If liked, a few quenelles (see LOBSTER QUENELLES) can be fried in butter, and put into the tureen before the soup is poured in. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for four or five persons. (See also BISQUE HOMARD.)
A clear lobster broth thickened and coloured at the last minute with pounded coral, in the manner of a bisque but without the rice or cream. Almost everything hinges on the final step.
- Never let it boil after the coral goes inThe coral is protein-rich roe and will tighten into hard red grains if it is boiled. Bring the strained soup to just below a simmer, stir the coral paste in off the heat, and hold it hot for a minute or two only, as the recipe directs: "when quite hot, without boiling, serve."
- "Hen lobster" and the coralA hen is a female, and only a female carrying roe gives coral, which is black-green when raw and turns scarlet on cooking. A hen with roe is worth asking the fishmonger for specifically. Without it you have a thin, pale broth, and the tomalley (the soft green liver) will give richness but not the colour.
- What to discardThe "brown fin" is generally taken to mean the feathery gills either side of the body, and "the bag in the head" is the gritty stomach sac just behind the eyes. Both come out and go in the bin; the recipe then has you pound the small claws, the fins and the chin in the mortar.
- TamisA tamis was a drum-shaped horsehair or muslin sieve through which soup was pushed with a wooden spoon. A fine-mesh conical strainer or a sieve lined with muslin does the same job; press hard, since much of the flavour is held in the pounded shell debris.
- Quantities and unitsA quart is 40 fl oz in this book's imperial measure, roughly 1.1 litres, so scale up if you use US quarts. "Good unseasoned stock" means a light unsalted chicken or fish stock; a heavily salted commercial stock will be too aggressive once reduced and seasoned again with the coral.
- The toasted roll crustThe crust of a French roll gave a faint toasted note and a little body once softened and pressed through the tamis. A crust of baguette, dried and browned in the oven, does the same.
- Timing the meatThe squares of tail and claw meat are already cooked. They are warmed through in the finished soup, not simmered; more than a couple of minutes and they tighten and go cottony.
- Yield and costFour to five, as the entry states. The "probable cost, 2s. 6d." is a household-budget note of the kind Cassell's gives throughout, not an instruction.
Cassell's places this among a run of lobster entries and points the reader onward to bisque homard, which is the same idea enriched and finished in the French manner. Thickening a soup with pounded shellfish coral is an old technique that predates the modern cream-based bisque, and it is why nineteenth-century books insist so firmly on a hen lobster: the roe was the colouring and the thickening agent. The instruction to pound the small claws and shell fragments in a mortar reflects a kitchen with no blender and plenty of hands, and the same logic survives in restaurant practice today, where lobster shells are still roasted and crushed for stock. Lobster appeared in potted, curried, buttered and souped forms throughout books of this kind, which is why a dictionary of cookery could give it several separate entries.