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Aspic of Lobster
Cut some broiled lobster tails in slices, put them in a basin, dust with salt and pepper and squeeze in a little lemon juice. Put a thin layer of aspic jelly in a plain cylinder mould, garnish it with some hard-boiled eggs and lobster spawn and allow to set, then pour in another layer of aspic jelly one-fourth inch thick, spread a layer of montpellier butter one-fourth inch thick on a baking-sheet and on another baking-sheet spread another layer of lobster butter one-fourth inch thick and stand them both on ice. Cut both butters when quite firm with a round tin cutter to the size of the lobster slices. Arrange alternately in a circle the lobster slices and montpellier butter in the cylinder mould, pour in sufficient aspic to reach one-fourth of an inch above them and leave till set; then arrange a circle of lobster slices and lobster butter, dressing them the reverse to the first circle, pour in more aspic jelly, and when set continue the alternate circles of butter and lobster slices. When then mould is full cover it with a baking-sheet, pack it in ice and allow it to stand for two hours or more. Prepare a rice socle on a dish, mask it with lobster butter, turn the aspic out of the mould onto it, garnish with chopped jelly and croutons of jelly, and serve.
A cold buffet showpiece from the era when a Waldorf garde-manger cook had all afternoon and a great deal of ice. Nothing here is difficult, but the whole thing depends on working cold and on building the mould in thin, fully set layers.
- The hinge: set each layer before the nextEvery layer of aspic must be firm to the touch before more liquid goes in, or the slices shift and the circles blur. The aspic you pour must also be cool and barely fluid — warm jelly melts the butter discs on contact and clouds the whole mould.
- Aspic jelly, unspecifiedOscar assumes a house stock: strong fish or veal stock, clarified with egg white and set with gelatin. No quantity is given. A firm unmoulding jelly is roughly 2 to 2 1/2 teaspoons of powdered gelatin per cup of cold stock, more than a spoonable jelly, since this one has to stand up on a platter.
- Montpellier butterA green compound butter of blanched tarragon, chervil, chives, parsley and spinach pounded with anchovy, capers, gherkin and hard-boiled egg yolk. It is a nineteenth-century larder staple, not something you will buy; make it a day ahead and chill it hard.
- Lobster butterMade by pounding the shells and coral with butter, warming gently, then straining through muslin into iced water so the coloured butter sets and can be lifted off. Its only job here is colour and flavour; "lobster spawn" in the garnish is the same coral, and it should be cooked with the lobster rather than used raw.
- VesselsA "plain cylinder mould" is an undecorated straight-sided mould — a charlotte tin or a loaf-shaped terrine both work. "Baking-sheet" here means a flat metal tray used only as a cold surface for spreading and cutting the butters, and later as a lid.
- Ice becomes the refrigerator"Pack it in ice" and "stand on ice" mean the coldest part of the fridge. Two hours is the minimum for a shallow mould; a full cylinder is better left overnight. Unmould by dipping the outside in warm water for a few seconds only.
- The rice socleA socle is a decorative pedestal, here a moulded block of stiffly cooked rice masked with lobster butter, made to raise the aspic on the platter. It is pure period display and can be skipped; a chilled serving dish with chopped aspic and cut aspic croutons around the base gives the same effect.
- Serving and yieldThe recipe gives no mould size or yield; a mould of about a quart would serve roughly six to eight as a first course. Serve it straight from the fridge — the butter layers soften quickly at room temperature and the jelly will begin to weep before long.
Aspic work of this kind was the signature of the garde-manger, the cold-kitchen department of the large late-nineteenth-century hotel, and it is the reason a book like this devotes space to butters and socles that no domestic cook would keep on hand. Oscar Tschirky, ma u00eetre d'h u00f4tel of the Waldorf from 1893 and of the Waldorf-Astoria after 1897, published his cook book in 1896; it records the repertoire of a kitchen working in the French manner that Escoffier would later codify in the Guide Culinaire of 1903, where a cold lobster was not simply dressed but disassembled and rebuilt in layers inside a mould. The clarified jelly, the compound butters cut with a tin cutter, the rice pedestal masked in pink u2014 all of it was designed to be looked at down the length of a buffet table before anyone touched it. Montpellier butter, generally traced to the south of France by its name, had by this period become a standard larder preparation for cold fish rather than a regional specialty.