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Roulette, Lobster
Boil the lobsters, take out the meat, and chop it up; pound the shells with butter, set them on the fire, and add half a pint of water. When it has boiled a quarter of an hour, add two ounces of flour, a little pounded mace, and a pinch of sugar; add bouillon to it till it becomes like thick pap; then stir in the chopped lobster and a little salt; remove from the fire; when quite cold, make it into shapes, and proceed as in the next recipe.
A lobster croquette mixture built on a shell-infused butter sauce. The recipe is written as a fragment: the final step "proceed as in the next recipe" means egg-and-breadcrumb the cold shapes and deep-fry them, which is how every other roulette in the book finishes.
- The hinge: the shells are the flavourPounding the shells with butter and simmering them is what makes this taste of lobster rather than of white sauce. Crush the shells hard, cook them in the butter until the fat turns orange, then strain the liquid thoroughly through a fine sieve or muslin before the flour goes in. Any shell fragment left in the mixture will ruin a fried croquette.
- Quantities to work fromHalf a pint is a cup in US measure, or 10 fl oz by the British pint of the period. The recipe gives neither the number of lobsters nor any weight of butter; for two lobsters of about 1 to 1 1/4 lb, roughly 4 oz butter with the shells is a reasonable working amount. Two ounces of flour to that liquid gives a stiff base, which is then let down with bouillon.
- "Like thick pap"Bouillon is added until the mixture is the consistency of stiff porridge that holds a spoon upright. It must be thicker than any sauce you would serve, because it has to set firm enough to roll and fry.
- MacePounded mace is the outer covering of the nutmeg, sold ground or as blades. A scant quarter teaspoon of ground mace is plenty for this quantity; it should read as warmth behind the lobster, not as spice.
- Boiling the lobsterFifteen minutes for a whole 1 1/4 lb lobster in boiling salted water is enough. The meat will be cooked again inside the croquette, so err short rather than long or it turns cottony.
- The cold set is not optionalSpread the mixture in a shallow tray, cover, and chill at least three hours or overnight. Shapes made from warm mixture will burst in the fryer.
- FinishingThe book defers to the following entry, which is not reproduced here; on the usual pattern, roll into corks or flatten into small cakes, coat in beaten egg and fine dry breadcrumbs, and fry until deep gold. In a modern kitchen that means about 350 to 375F for two to three minutes. Drain on paper.
- YieldTwo small lobsters give roughly twelve croquettes, enough for four as a first course.
Cassell's runs a series of "roulettes" -- croquette mixtures rolled into shapes, crumbed and fried -- and this lobster version shows the Victorian kitchen's habit of extracting value from every part of an expensive ingredient. The shell-and-butter infusion is the same principle as classical lobster butter and bisque, where the crushed carapace carries most of the colour and aroma; discarding it would have been unthinkable in a professional kitchen of the period. The word roulette here is often taken to mean something rolled, though it is more likely a French diminutive (rouelle/roulette, a little wheel), and the recipe's abrupt ending -- "proceed as in the next recipe" -- is characteristic of the dictionary format, which assumed a reader working straight down an alphabetical column rather than dipping in at a single entry.