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Lobsters in Casserole
Cut the tails of some boiled lobster into scallops, and place them in a circle in a silver casserole. Fry some chopped shallots in a little butter for a few minutes, then pour in a little sherry wine and finish cooking. When they are done pour over the shallots some Spanish sauce and tomato puree, mixed in equal quantity, stir and boil for five minutes, and dust in a little cayenne pepper. Cut the meats of the lobster claws in small dices, put in the center of the casserole, pour over the sauce, stand the casserole in the oven for ten minutes to warm the lobster and serve.
A reheat-and-sauce dish rather than a cooking one: the lobster is already boiled, so everything after that is about warming it through without toughening it. Two 1 1/4-lb lobsters, picked, will serve two generously or four as a first course.
- "Casserole" hereOscar means a shallow silver or metal serving dish that goes from oven to table, not a deep covered baking dish. Any low flameproof gratin dish, or individual ones, does the job; a cast-iron skillet works if presentation is not the point.
- Spanish sauceSauce espagnole, the brown mother sauce of veal or beef stock thickened with brown roux and flavoured with mirepoix and tomato. A well-reduced brown stock or a good demi-glace stands in for it; canned "brown gravy" does not.
- Tomato pureeIn this period puree meant cooked, sieved fresh tomato, thinner and brighter than modern canned tomato paste. Use passata or thinned canned crushed tomato rather than paste straight from the tube, or the sauce turns dense and sweet.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no temperature. A moderate oven, around 350F, is enough for a ten-minute warming. The lobster is already fully cooked; anything hotter or longer and the tail scallops go stringy.
- Scallops"scallops" here means slices of the tail meat cut crosswise; cut them thick. Arrange them overlapping around the rim so the diced claw meat and sauce fill the middle.
- The sherry"Pour in a little sherry and finish cooking" means reduce it almost away with the shallots, so the alcohol cooks off and only the nutty flavour remains. A dry amontillado or fino suits it; cream sherry makes the sauce cloying.
- Sauce quantityRoughly 3/4 cup of the mixed sauce is enough for two lobsters. Boil it the stated five minutes to bind the two components and check the salt then, since espagnole and tomato both concentrate.
- Getting more from the shellsNothing in the original uses the bodies and shells. Simmering them in the stock or the sherry before making the sauce gives the dish the lobster depth a plain brown sauce lacks.
Oscar Tschirky was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf from its opening in 1893, and this is a fair sample of how the hotel handled shellfish: French sauce technique, an expensive protein already cooked, and a vessel meant to be carried gleaming to the table. The name of the dish comes from that vessel rather than from any method, which is why an "in casserole" preparation of this period may involve no real baking, only a spell in the oven to bring everything to temperature. Espagnole and tomato in equal parts gives something close to a brown-stock counterpart of sauce aurore, which is normally built on velvete; the tomato's acid keeps the brown sauce from tasting heavy. The book appeared in 1896, and serving lobster out of the shell, cut into neat scallops and dice, was expensive labour.