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Lobster Bordelaise
Cut some live lobsters into eight pieces, crack the claws without spoiling the shape, put them in a saucepan and cover with white wine, a little garlic, two bay leaves, a small bunch of parsley and thyme, and a little pepper and salt; place the lid on the saucepan and let the mixture boil for twenty-five minutes, stirring often to prevent burning. When they are cooked take each piece of lobster out, dry in a cloth, and replace them in a clean saucepan. Fry a few slices of onions and shallots in butter, and when they are browned stir in a little flour, cook it, then pour in some of the liquor in which the pieces of lobster were cooked. Stir over the fire for ten minutes, then mix in a teacupful of tomato sauce, a pinch of cayenne, the pieces of lobster, and warm them again. Arrange the lobster on a hot dish in such a way that they will not have the appearance of being cut, put the claws around, pour over the sauce and serve.
A classic French treatment scaled for restaurant service, where lobsters arrived alive and were dispatched at the stove. The method is sound; only the timings and a few quantities need translating.
- Cut down the first cookingTwenty-five minutes of boiling turns lobster meat fibrous and dry. Split and sectioned lobster in simmering wine needs 6 to 8 minutes for the body pieces and about 10 for thick claws; the shells should be uniformly red and the meat just set.
- "Cover with white wine"The original means what it says, so for two 1 1/4-lb lobsters that is 2 cups of dry white wine or more, enough to submerge the pieces. Using less, with the pieces only part covered in a tight-lidded pan, is a modern departure from the instruction rather than a reading of it.
- Cutting a live lobsterDrive a heavy knife through the head behind the eyes to kill it first, then section the body and separate claws and knuckles. This is the standard method and is faster and cleaner than working with a struggling animal.
- A teacupfulSomewhere between 4 and 6 fl oz; the measure was never standardised. The tomato sauce meant here is a cooked, seasoned sauce rather than raw puree; a thick passata reduced with a little stock stands in well.
- The roux and reductionTwo tablespoons each of butter and flour will thicken about 2 cups of the cooking liquor. Strain the liquor before adding it, and reduce until it coats a spoon rather than adding more flour.
- Garlic and shallot amounts"A little garlic" reads as one or two cloves for two lobsters; the onion and shallot together should be about 3/4 cup, sliced thin so they soften rather than colour hard.
- ReheatingReturn the lobster to the finished sauce off the boil and warm through for two minutes at most. Any further cooking undoes the shortened first stage.
- YieldTwo lobsters treated this way serve two generously or four as a first course.
Bordelaise in the classical French repertoire usually means a red wine and marrow sauce, but the name applied to shellfish is often closer to the garlic, shallot, tomato and cayenne combination seen here, close kin to lobster a l'Americaine and Provencale. Oscar Tschirky was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf from 1893, and the collection appeared under his name in 1896; how far it records what that kitchen actually cooked is uncertain, as much of it follows the standard repertoire. The instruction to arrange the pieces so they do not look cut suits hotel service: the diner was meant to see a whole lobster on the platter, sauce and all.