Lobster Bisque
2 lb. lobster 1/4 cup butter 2 cups cold water 1/4 cup flour 4 cups milk 1 1/2 teaspoons salt Few grains of cayenne Remove meat from lobster shell. Add cold water to body bones and tough end of claws, cut in pieces; bring slowly to boiling-point, and cook twenty minutes. Drain, reserve liquor, and thicken with butter and flour cooked together. Scald milk with tail meat of lobster, finely chopped; strain, and add to liquor. Season with salt and cayenne; then add tender claw meat, cut in dice, and body meat. When coral is found in lobster, wash, wipe, force through fine strainer, put in a mortar with butter, work until well blended, then add flour, and stir into soup. If a richer soup is desired, White Stock may be used in place of water.
A shell-stock cream soup in the Boston cooking-school manner: the shells make a short broth, the tail meat flavours the milk, and the coral enriches and colours the finished pot. Nothing here is difficult, but the soup is easily ruined in the last five minutes.
- The hinge: never let it boilOnce the thickened liquor and the milk are combined, hold the soup below a simmer, around 180F. Boiling curdles the milk against the shellfish broth and toughens the claw meat you have just added.
- The lobsterA 2 lb lobster, cooked and picked, yields roughly 8 oz of meat. Buy it live and boil or steam it yourself, or ask for a cooked one; frozen tails alone will not work, since the recipe depends on the body, bones and claw shells for its stock.
- Coral and tomalleyCoral is the roe of a female lobster, dark green raw and coral-red once cooked. Working it to a paste with the butter before adding the flour is a lobster butter in miniature; it thickens, colours and seasons. If your lobster has none, the soup is still good, just paler.
- A short stockTwenty minutes is enough for lobster shells. Unlike beef bones, crustacean shells give up their flavour quickly, and long boiling is generally said to make them bitter. The two cups of water will reduce over that time, so expect rather less liquor than you began with.
- "Scald" the milkHeat the milk with the chopped tail meat to just below boiling, until it steams and shows a rim of bubbles, then strain. This is an infusion, not a cooking step, and five to ten minutes off the direct heat is enough.
- White StockThe book's White Stock is a light veal or chicken broth. Any unsalted light chicken stock substitutes directly, cup for cup, in place of the water.
- SeasoningThe cayenne here is a background heat, not a flavour you should identify. Start with a scant pinch, and taste before committing to the full 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, since the shell liquor concentrates as it cooks.
- YieldAbout six cups, serving four to six as a first course. It thickens as it stands; thin with a little more scalded milk when reheating gently.