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Bisque of Lobster
Remove meat from two small or one large freshly boiled lobster. Allow one cup of cold water to every pound of lobster also two cups of milk and a tablespoon each of butter and flour. For two pounds of lobster meat, therefore, put two cups of cold water into the fish-kettle, then add the shell, claws, etc., cut in pieces. Bring to the boiling point and let simmer for twenty minutes. Drain, and thicken the liquor thus obtained with one-fourth cup of flour and same quantity of butter cooked together. Chop the tail meat of the lobster very fine and let it become heated in four cups of milk. Then strain, and add to liquor. Now add the lobster meat cut in dice, salt, pepper and cayenne. Just before serving add the coral mashed to a paste, with the green part, which is the fat of the lobster, and, when all is thoroughly mixed serve with two inch squares of sautéd bread.
A straightforward shell-stock bisque, thickened with roux rather than rice or bread. Two things in the original need untangling before you start: the butter-and-flour quantities contradict each other, and the yield of meat is optimistic.
- How much lobster you actually needA lobster yields roughly 20-25 percent of its weight in picked meat, so "two pounds of lobster meat" implies something like eight to ten pounds of lobster in the shell, far more than the two small ones or one large one the first line suggests. Scale the liquid to the meat you really have: one cup water and two cups milk per pound.
- The roux contradictionThe rule at the top gives a tablespoon each of butter and flour per pound of lobster, which would be two tablespoons each for a two-pound batch. The worked example then calls for a quarter cup each, i.e. four tablespoons. The larger amount gives a properly bisque-like body in six cups of liquid; the smaller leaves it thin.
- Fish-kettleSimply a long lidded pot for poaching whole fish. Any saucepan that holds the broken shells and two to three cups of water will do. Crack the shells and claws well before simmering; the flavour is in the exposed surfaces.
- Steeping and strainingAs written you chop the tail meat fine, heat it in the milk, strain it out, then add "the lobster meat cut in dice" as if it were still on hand. Divide the meat: use the body and small leg meat, chopped fine, for the milk infusion, and keep the tail and claws whole to dice for the finished soup.
- Do not let it boil once the milk is inAfter the strained milk goes into the thickened stock, hold it just below a simmer. Lobster protein toughens fast, and a milk-based soup at a hard boil can catch on the pan or separate.
- Coral and tomalleyThe coral is the roe of a female lobster, which turns bright red when cooked; the "green part" is the tomalley, or hepatopancreas. Both are added off the heat as a finishing enrichment. Health agencies now advise against eating tomalley, since it concentrates cadmium and marine biotoxins, so a modern cook may reasonably leave it out; the soup loses richness but not structure.
- Sautéd breadTwo-inch croutons fried in butter until golden, served on top or alongside. Cut them from a firm white loaf and fry just before serving so they stay crisp in the soup.
- Seasoning and yieldSalt, white or black pepper, and cayenne are the whole seasoning list; add the cayenne a pinch at a time, since it is meant to be felt rather than tasted. Two pounds of meat in six cups of liquid makes about six generous first-course servings.
Bisque arrived in English-language cookbooks from French practice, where the word is often said to describe a thick shellfish soup built on a stock made from the shells - the part a household would otherwise throw away - though the derivation is disputed and early French bisques were made with pigeons and other birds garnished with crayfish. Lobster bisque appears in American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s as an elegant opener for a dinner given at home, and the Butterick book, published by a pattern company for readers running their own kitchens without a French chef, breaks it down into a ratio anyone can scale: one cup water and two cups milk to every pound of meat. The milk-and-roux base rather than cream and egg yolks is characteristically American and thrifty. Lobster was still comparatively cheap along the Northeast coast in this period, having risen from bait and poor-man's food in the early nineteenth century to a canned and railroad-shipped delicacy by the time this recipe was printed.