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Stuffed Lobster a la Merinole
A boiled lobster cut in half lengthwise; cut meat in small pieces, use the coral if any; chop an onion fine, put in saucepan with lump of butter; when brown add lobster meat, a pinch of curry powder, a pinch of English mustard, a few pieces of celery cut small. Let this cook for a few minutes, then add cup of cream, cook in double boiler until thick; then add three egg yolks and when cold fill lobster shell. Take grated cheese and bread crumbs and drawn butter and pour over the top. Brown in oven for from five to eight minutes. Mrs David Friend.
A late-Victorian club-style lobster gratin: the meat is bound in a curried cream sauce, returned to the shell and browned. The original assumes you know how to handle egg yolks in a hot sauce, and gives no oven temperature.
- The hinge: the yolksBeat the three yolks with a little of the hot cream, stir the mixture back into the sauce off direct heat, and cook it in the double boiler only until it coats a spoon. Yolks dropped straight into a boiling sauce will scramble and the filling will be grainy.
- Lobster size and yieldA single 1 1/2 to 2 lb boiled lobster gives roughly a cup to a cup and a half of meat and two filled half-shells. That serves two as a main course or four as a first course; the cup of cream is generous for one lobster, so reduce it if the mixture looks loose.
- CoralThe coral is the roe of a female lobster, dark green when raw and coral-red once cooked. Chop and stir it in with the meat; it thickens and colours the sauce. If there is none, the dish is unaffected.
- Drawn butterThe term is ambiguous in books of this period: some writers use it for plain melted or clarified butter, while American authorities such as Farmer and Rorer give a flour-thickened drawn butter sauce. Melted butter poured over the crumbs is what is wanted here.
- English mustardDry mustard powder, not the prepared jarred kind. A pinch is genuinely a pinch: it and the curry powder are meant to sharpen the cream, not flavour the dish outright.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the shells only need colour. A hot oven, around 450F, or a broiler will do it; watch them closely, since under a broiler the crumbs may colour well before the five to eight minutes the recipe allows.
- Filling coldCooling the mixture before filling makes it firm enough to mound in the shell. It also means the centre will be barely warm after eight minutes in the oven, so serve immediately and accept that this is a browning, not a reheating.
- CheeseAn unspecified grated cheese in American cookery of this period commonly meant a dry aged cheddar or Parmesan. Either works; a soft cheese will loosen the topping.
Good Housekeeping's cook book printed contributed recipes over the contributor's name, which is why this one carries Mrs David Friend's. The dish belongs to the broad family of late nineteenth-century hotel and chafing-dish lobster preparations, though these differ from one another: Newburg is boiled lobster meat bound with cream and egg yolk, Thermidor is returned to the shell under a browned mustard-cream sauce, and a l'americaine is tomato-based and not served in the shell. The curry powder and English mustard mark it as an Anglo-American variation rather than a French one; curry powder was a familiar grocery item in American kitchens by the later nineteenth century and turns up in cream sauces, croquettes and chafing-dish suppers far more often than in anything resembling an Indian dish. The name a la Merinole has no settled origin and does not correspond to any classical French garnish; invented or personalised titles of this kind were common on hotel menus of the period and were freely borrowed by home cooks submitting recipes to magazines.