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Lobster a la Newburg
2 lb. lobster 1/4 cup butter 1/2 teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne Slight grating nutmeg 1 tablespoon Sherry 1 tablespoon brandy 1/3 cup thin cream Yolks 2 eggs Remove lobster meat from shell and cut in slices. Melt butter, add lobster, and cook three minutes. Add seasonings and wine, cook one minute, then add cream and yolks of eggs slightly beaten. Stir until thickened. Serve with toast or Puff Paste Points.
A short, rich entree that stands or falls on one point: the sauce is thickened by egg yolk, not by flour, so it must never come near a boil.
- The hinge — no boilingOnce the cream and yolks go in, keep the pan over low heat, or move it to a bowl over hot water, and stir constantly until it coats the spoon. A simmer will scramble the yolks and break the sauce.
- Thin cream"Thin cream" in this period means roughly 18 to 20 percent fat, i.e. modern light cream; half-and-half is thinner still but will serve. Heavy cream works and is more forgiving of heat, but gives a heavier sauce than intended.
- A 2 lb lobsterA whole 2 lb lobster yields roughly 6 to 8 oz of picked meat. Cook and cool it first, then slice the tail into rounds and leave the claw meat in large pieces. Frozen or previously cooked lobster meat needs only a minute in the butter, not three.
- Seasoning amounts"Few grains cayenne" is a scant pinch, about 1/16 teaspoon; "slight grating nutmeg" is a stroke or two on a fine grater. Both should be undetectable as individual flavours.
- Sherry and brandyUse a dry or medium sherry, not cooking sherry, which is salted. The minute of cooking after the wine goes in is to take the raw edge off the spirit; it will not burn off all the alcohol.
- Puff paste pointsThese are triangles or diamonds of baked puff pastry, cut from a rolled sheet and baked in a hot oven until risen and dry; the book gives no temperature. Frozen all-butter puff pastry is a fair substitute; buttered toast points are the plainer option the recipe allows.
- YieldServes two generously as a main course, or four as a first course in pastry cases. It does not reheat — make it immediately before serving.
Lobster a la Newburg belongs to the Delmonico's kitchen in New York, and the name is traditionally traced to a patron named Ben Wenberg, said to have been a sea captain, who is supposed to have shown the dish to the restaurant in the 1870s; after a falling-out the letters of "Wenberg" were rearranged into "Newberg" or "Newburg" on the menu. Whatever the truth of the anecdote, the formula printed by Delmonico's chef Charles Ranhofer is close to this one: lobster warmed in butter with a fortified wine, bound with cream and yolks -- though Ranhofer's version calls for Madeira rather than the sherry and brandy here. By the time it reached American cookery-school books like this one it had become a standard demonstration of an egg-thickened sauce, and a way to make a small quantity of expensive shellfish feed a table.