No. 1031

Lobster a la Duglere

Homard a la Duglere

Cut live lobsters into pieces, heat some butter in a sautoir, and when hot range the pieces of lobster one beside the other; fry them over a quick fire, then moisten with brandy, set it on fire, add Madeira and white wine, seasoning with salt, pepper and a little cayenne pepper; add to it some peeled, pressed and cut up tomatoes, a clove of crushed garlic, and a good, cooked mirepoix (No. 419). As soon as the lobsters are done, lay them in a dish, reduce the sauce with veloute (No. 415), and incorporate into it just when ready to serve, some butter and lemon juice; pour this over the lobster, and dredge the surface with a pinch of chopped chervil and chives.

← No. 1030 Deviled, Roasted Lobster Lobster No. 1032 Lobster a la Fresne →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with stocks and garnishes already standing by, so the page gives no quantities and cross-references two other numbers. The proportions below are the usual ones for a dish of this type; the technique is the part that matters.

Scale and yieldTwo lobsters of about 1½ lb each serve four as a course. Figure roughly 3 oz butter for the initial sauté, ¼ cup brandy, ½ cup Madeira, 1 cup dry white wine, 3 or 4 tomatoes and one garlic clove for that quantity.
Cutting up live lobstersSplit the head lengthwise through the cross mark behind the eyes with the point of a heavy knife before jointing the tail and cracking the claws. This is the quickest despatch available in a kitchen, though a lobster's nerve ganglia run the length of the body and death is not strictly instantaneous; sectioning from the tail end is worse. Chilling it for 20 minutes in the freezer first makes it inert and easier to handle.
SautoirA straight-sided sauté pan, wide enough to hold the pieces in a single layer with the shells down. Crowding steams the shells instead of browning them, and the browned shell is where the colour and most of the flavour of the sauce come from.
"A quick fire"High heat, 3 to 4 minutes, until the shells turn scarlet and the butter smells nutty. The lobster then finishes in the wine and tomato, covered, in about 8 minutes more. Total time in the pan should not exceed 12 minutes; beyond that the tail meat goes cottony and pulls away from the shell in threads.
Flaming the brandyPull the pan off the burner, add the brandy, then ignite it with a long match at arm's length. Adding spirits over a live flame is how range fires start. Let it burn out completely before the Madeira and white wine go in.
Mirepoix (No. 419)Ranhofer's cooked mirepoix is broadly carrot, onion and celery diced small and stewed in butter with a little ham or bacon, a bay leaf and thyme, moistened with wine and reduced; see No. 419 for his own version. The recipe gives no quantity — about half a cup, made in advance, suits the amounts above; a plain buttered brunoise of the same vegetables will do.
Velouté (No. 415)The recipe simply cites Ranhofer's velouté at No. 415; for a shellfish dish a fish velouté (white roux moistened with fish stock) is the sensible reading, though the page does not specify one. About ¾ cup, stirred into the reduced pan liquid, brings the sauce to coating consistency. Without it, reduce the pan juices hard and finish with rather more cold butter instead.
Finishing with butterThe butter and lemon juice go in off the heat, swirled, at the last moment. If the sauce is allowed to boil after that it separates and the gloss is gone.
ChervilRarely stocked fresh. Flat-leaf parsley with a few tarragon leaves approximates its anise note; dried chervil contributes nothing.

A Little History

The name honours Adolphe Dugléré, chef of the Café Anglais in Paris in the 1860s and 70s and a pupil of Carême, whose kitchen gave its name to a small family of dishes built on tomato, shallot, white wine and a fish-stock sauce — most familiarly sole Dugléré. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years and published The Epicurean in 1894, had trained in France and reproduced this Parisian repertoire for American diners, with the additions a lobster dish permits: brandy flamed over the shells, Madeira, garlic, cayenne. The bare, quantity-free style of the entry is characteristic: it was written for cooks who already had velouté and mirepoix on the stove and needed only the order of operations.