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Bisque of Lobster
Remove the meat of a lobster from the shell, and cut the tender pieces into quarter inch dice; put the ends of the claw-meat and any tough portions in a saucepan with the bones of the body and a little cold water, and boil for twenty minutes, adding a little water from time to time as may be necessary. Put the coral to dry in a moderate oven, and mix a little flour with some cold milk, and stir into the milk, which should be boiling, stirring over the fire for ten minutes; then strain the water from the bones and other parts, mix it with the milk, add a little butter, salt, pepper and cayenne to taste, and rub the dry coral through a fine hair sieve, putting enough into the soup to make it a bright pink color. Place the green fat and lobster dice in a soup tureen, strain the boiling soup over them and serve at once.
Oscar gives proportions almost entirely by eye, which is workable once you fix the ratio of milk to thickening and understand that the coral is doing the colouring, not the flavouring.
- Scale itThe recipe specifies no quantities; one 1½–2 lb hen lobster with about 1 quart of whole milk will give roughly four servings. The strained shell water adds perhaps a cup of liquid to thin the milk, though Oscar tops the pan up as it boils rather than reducing it.
- The flour and milk"A little flour with some cold milk" means a slurry: about 2 tablespoons flour whisked smooth into ½ cup cold milk, stirred into the balance of the milk at a boil. Ten minutes of gentle stirring cooks out the raw starch; keep the heat low enough that the milk does not catch on the pan bottom.
- Moderate ovenConventionally somewhere around 325–350°F. The coral needs only a few minutes spread thin on a tray — you want it dry and crumbly enough to push through a sieve, not toasted.
- Coral is not guaranteedCoral is the roe, present only in hen lobsters, and it is greenish-black until cooked, when it turns scarlet. A male lobster yields none, and the soup will be ivory rather than pink. A pinch of paprika or a spoon of tomato purée is a common substitute.
- Hair sieveA fine-mesh strainer with the back of a spoon does the same job. The point is to break the dried coral to powder so it disperses instead of speckling.
- The green fatThe tomalley, the lobster's hepatopancreas. It was prized as the richest part of the animal, but it can concentrate contaminants and biotoxins from the water, and state and federal shellfish authorities have for some years advised against eating it. Some cooks now discard it.
- Shell stockTwenty minutes is right for a light extraction. Crack the body shell and claws first so the water reaches the interior, and keep the water barely covering — Oscar's "adding a little water from time to time" is guarding against a dry pan, not building volume.
- Don't reboil the meatThe diced tail meat goes into the tureen cold and is heated only by the soup poured over it. Lobster already cooked once toughens quickly; this is the reason for the order of operations.
Bisque reached the Waldorf kitchen as a French restaurant form, and by the 1890s lobster bisque was a conspicuous item on American hotel menus — expensive, showy, and pink. The word was long attached to a thick shellfish purée made with pounded shell; Oscar's version is lighter, thickened with a milk-and-flour liaison and coloured with sieved coral rather than pounded carcass, which is why it reads more like a cream soup than a bisque of the older kind. Its presence in this book reflects the New England lobster trade of the period: rail-borne live lobster from Maine made a dish that had been a coastal commonplace into an urban luxury. Note too the assumption, common enough in cookery of the period and only later reversed by public-health advice, that the tomalley was the best part of the animal and belonged in the tureen.