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Lobster Timbales II
2 lb. live lobster 1/4 cup stale bread crumbs 1/2 cup heavy cream 2 eggs Sherry wine Salt and pepper Split lobster, remove intestinal vein, liver, and stomach. Crack claw shells with mallet, then remove all meat, scraping as close to shell as possible to-obtain the color desired. Force meat through a sieve, add bread crumbs, cream, eggs slightly beaten, and salt, pepper, and Sherry wine to taste. Fill small timbale moulds two-thirds full, place in iron frying-pan, and pour in boiling water to two-thirds the depths of the moulds. Place over moulds buttered paper and cook on the range until firm, keeping water below the boiling-point. Remove from moulds and serve with Hot Mayonnaise (see p. 278). Lobster Cream I 2 lb. lobster 1/2 cup soft stale bread crumbs 1/2 cup milk 1/4 cup cream 2 teaspoons anchovy sauce 1/2 teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne Whites 3 eggs Remove lobster meat from shell and chop finely. Cook bread and milk ten minutes. Add cream, seasonings, and whites of eggs beaten until stiff. Turn into one slightly buttered timbale mould and two slightly buttered Dario moulds. Bake as Lobster Timbales. Remove to serving dish, having larger mould in centre, smaller moulds one at either end. Pour around Lobster Sauce I, sprinkle with coral rubbed through a sieve, and garnish with pieces of lobster shell from tail, and parsley.
A stovetop custard of pureed lobster, set gently in small moulds and turned out. The whole dish turns on heat control: the water around the moulds must never boil.
- Keep the water below a simmer"Cook on the range... keeping water below the boiling-point" means holding the bath somewhere short of a simmer. If it boils, the egg custard curdles and weeps, and the timbales will not unmould cleanly. A heavy pan on the lowest burner setting works; the book specifies the range, but a moderate oven with the same water bath does the same job.
- Timbale mouldsSmall straight-sided metal cups, probably somewhere around 1/3 to 1/2 cup capacity. Ceramic ramekins or dariole moulds of similar size are the modern equivalent (the book treats its "Dario" moulds as the smaller of the two); butter them well and line the bottoms with a disc of parchment if you want a clean turn-out.
- Buttered paperA round of parchment laid directly on the moulds, buttered side down. It keeps condensation off the custard surface and stops a skin forming. Foil works but should not touch the food.
- DonenessFirm means set at the edges with only the faintest wobble at the centre. The recipe gives no time; expect roughly 25 to 35 minutes depending on mould size. A thin knife inserted at the edge should come out clean. Let them stand five minutes before unmoulding.
- The lobsterA 2 lb live lobster yields roughly 1/2 lb picked meat. The recipe does not actually say whether the lobster is boiled before picking, though period practice was generally to cook it first. The green tomalley (liver) and the stomach sac behind the eyes are discarded here, but the coral from a hen lobster is worth saving as garnish -- the companion recipe on this page uses it.
- Forcing through a sieveA food processor does this in seconds. Pulse the meat to a coarse paste, then add crumbs, cream and eggs and pulse briefly again; over-working makes the mixture rubbery rather than tender.
- Bread crumbs"Stale" here most likely means crumb from a day-old loaf rather than commercial dried crumbs, which are much thirstier. Worth noting that the companion recipe specifies "soft stale bread crumbs" while this one does not.
- Seasoning to tasteWith raw egg in the mix, cook a teaspoon of the mixture in a small pan to check salt, pepper and Sherry before filling the moulds. A tablespoon of dry Sherry per pound of lobster is a reasonable starting point.
- YieldThe recipe gives no number; the quantity of mixture suggests six or more small timbales, served as a first course or light entree with the hot mayonnaise called for.