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Lobster à La Newburg
2 tablespoons butter
1 pint milk
1 teaspoon flour
3 egg-yolks
I boiled lobster or I can of
Salt lobster
Cayenne
Place the butter in the blazer and stir it as it foams. Rub the flour smooth with the water, add this and the salt and pepper, then one-half of the milk, stirring all of the time and being careful that the flame is not too hot. Beat the yolks of the eggs until A frothy, add the remainder of the milk and stir all into the chafing dish. When the mass is of the consistency of cream, add the lobster, cut up coarsely, and, when thoroughly heated, serve. If using the fresh fish, prepare as for boiled lobster. Just before adding the lobster, rub the coral and the fat together and stir in. When quite mixed, add the lobster.
CASSEROLE COOKERY
A chafing-dish recipe from the era when tableside cookery was fashionable entertaining. The ingredient list has been garbled in printing — water, salt and pepper appear in the method but not the list — and the thickening is almost entirely egg yolk, which dictates how you handle the heat.
- The hinge: keep it below a simmerWith one teaspoon of flour to a pint of milk, this is a custard sauce, not a béchamel. Hold it under about 180F and pull it off the heat the moment it coats a spoon; if it boils the yolks scramble and the sauce breaks into curds and whey.
- "Blazer" and chafing dishThe blazer is the shallow upper pan of a chafing dish, set directly over the spirit flame. A heavy-bottomed saucepan over low heat does the same job, and a double boiler is safer still given how easily the yolks curdle.
- The missing water and seasoningThe method calls for rubbing the flour smooth with water and adding salt and pepper, none of which are quantified. Two tablespoons of cold water will smooth a teaspoon of flour; season to taste, with cayenne on the tip of a knife rather than by the spoon.
- Canned lobsterShelf-stable canned lobster was a common pantry item when this book was written and is now scarce and expensive. Use the meat of a 1 1/2 to 2 lb boiled lobster, which yields roughly 1 to 1 1/2 cups, or good frozen lobster meat thawed and drained well.
- Coral and fatThe coral is the roe, found only in hens, and it sets hard and bright red when cooked; the green tomalley is the "fat." Mash them together with a little soft butter into a smooth paste before stirring in, or they will stay as gritty specks.
- Heating the lobsterThe lobster is already cooked. One to two minutes in the hot sauce is enough — longer and it turns fibrous and squeaky, the usual fault in Newburg.
- What the recipe leaves outClassic Newburg is finished with sherry or Madeira, about two tablespoons, added off the heat. This version omits it entirely, which is worth noting if the result tastes flatter than expected.
- Yield and servingEnough for three or four as a first course, spooned over toast points, in puff-pastry cases, or on plain boiled rice. It does not hold or reheat; serve it as soon as it thickens.
Lobster Newburg is generally traced to Delmonico's in New York in the 1870s, where it is said to have been named for a customer, Ben Wenberg, and rechristened "Newburg" by rearranging his name after the two parties fell out — an attribution repeated in nearly every cookbook since, though the documentary trail is thin. Its appearance here reflects the chafing-dish vogue that ran from the 1890s through the First World War: a spirit lamp and a blazer let a hostess cook at the table without servants, and the dishes chosen for it seem often to have been quick, rich and made from something already cooked or canned. Lobster suited that perfectly, since it arrived at the kitchen boiled or in a tin and needed only warming through in a sauce.