No. 1026

Lobster a la Bonnefoy

Homard a la Bonnefoy

Chop up two ounces of onions and two shallots, fry them in oil without letting attain a color, and add to them two live lobsters' tails cut in pieces across three-eights of an inch thick with their shells. Saute them for a few moments over a brisk fire, and season with salt, cayenne, a bunch of parsley, garnished with thyme, and a clove of garlic, moisten with a pint of white or red wine; cover the sautoire, and cook the lobsters for fifteen minutes, then drain off the pieces, dress them in a pyramidal form on a dish, and add to the broth a few tablespoonfuls of tomato sauce (No. 549), and espagnole sauce (No. 414). Pound the creamy parts picked from the bodies with a little cayenne pepper, press it through a sieve, and stir it into the sauce with some minced mushrooms; pour this over the lobsters, and finish by sprinkling the surface with chopped parsley; add a little finely shredded tarragon leaves.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A Ranhofer sauté in the Bordelaise family, built on live lobster cut in the shell and finished with the tomalley. Most of the work is in the two mother sauces the recipe cross-references.

The cross-referenced saucesEspagnole (No. 414) is a brown stock sauce thickened with brown roux and simmered for hours; tomato sauce (No. 549) is a stock-based tomato sauce, not a pasta sauce. A few tablespoons of a good demi-glace stands in for the espagnole; canned crushed tomatoes cooked down with stock will carry the tomato element.
Cutting live lobsterRanhofer means the tail severed from a live animal and cut crosswise through the shell into rings about 3/8 inch thick. One common method is to drive a heavy knife through the head behind the eyes first, then joint and slice. The recipe gives no weight for the two lobsters.
The creamy partsThis is the tomalley (green liver) and any coral from the body cavity, pounded with cayenne and sieved. It adds body and much of the flavour alongside the espagnole and tomato. Stir it in off the heat at the end; boiled hard it curdles into grit.
SautoireA straight-sided sauté pan wide enough to hold the pieces in one layer. A 12-inch skillet with a lid works.
Fifteen minutes is longLobster in the shell is cooked through in five to seven minutes at a simmer. Fifteen minutes gives firm, cottony meat by modern taste. Pull the pieces when the shells are red and the meat is just set, and let the liquid go on reducing without them.
The bouquet"A bunch of parsley garnished with thyme" is a bouquet garni: parsley stems and thyme sprigs tied together so they can be lifted out before saucing. The clove of garlic is listed separately in the seasoning.
WineA pint (16 fl oz) of dry white gives the lighter version; red gives the darker Bordelaise character. Either should be dry and unoaked.
YieldThe recipe gives no yield; two lobster tails plated in a pyramid would plausibly serve two as a main or four as a first course.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the house repertoire written down, with its sauces numbered and cross-referenced like a working chef's notebook. The dish sits in a run of lobster sautés built on the same idea as homard a l'americaine and a la bordelaise: shellfish cut in the shell, browned in oil rather than butter, moistened with wine and bound at the end with its own tomalley. The name is generally taken from the sauce Bonnefoy of nineteenth-century French practice, a shallot and white wine reduction, though Ranhofer's version pulls it toward the tomato and espagnole side. What the recipe records above all is the era's confidence with lobster as a hot, saucy restaurant dish rather than a boiled one served cold with mayonnaise.