No. 1032

Lobster a la Fresne

Homard a la Fresne

Take two lobsters each weighing two and a half pounds, and cook them by steam for one-half hour. Detach the tails from the bodies; take the meats out of the former whole, and set it aside to get cool, and from them obtain one pound to cut up into slices; put these into a vessel with half as much mushrooms, and half as much truffles as mushrooms, moisten the whole with a pint of veloute sauce (No. 415), reduced with cream and thickened with egg-yolks and butter, not having too much, only just sufficient to envelop the garnishing; dress the lobsters, arranging them dome-shape, smooth the surface nicely, and decorate with large fanciful cuts of truffles; garnish around with some cream quenelles (No. 76) without decorations.

← No. 1031 Lobster a la Duglere Lobster No. 1033 Lobster a la Gambetta →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's composed lobster dish: cooked lobster meat bound in an enriched velouté, mounded back into the shells and finished with truffle cutouts and quenelles. Two things decide whether it works — how long the lobsters cook and whether the egg-yolk liaison is allowed to boil.

The hinge: never boil the finished sauceVelouté reduced with cream and finished with egg yolks and butter will curdle the moment it simmers. Take the pan off the heat, whisk the yolks in with a little hot sauce first, and return it only to a bare steam.
Half an hour of steam is far too longHalf an hour of steam is longer than modern practice -- a 2 1/2 lb lobster is usually steamed about 15-20 minutes; thirty minutes leaves the tail meat fibrous and dry.
"Dress the lobsters" means the shells"Dress the lobsters" -- the recipe says only to arrange the mixture dome-shape and smooth the surface before decorating. One common reading is that the emptied body shells serve as the vessel, though the text does not say so.
Cross-referenced saucesNo. 415 is Ranhofer's velouté, a blond roux moistened with white stock. A good chicken or fish velouté stands in directly. No. 76 is his cream forcemeat quenelle — a pounded chicken or fish farce lightened with cream and poached in small ovals.
Proportions of the garnishTo one pound of sliced lobster meat, half a pound of mushrooms and a quarter pound of truffles. The truffle quantity is a nineteenth-century restaurant assumption; a few grams of fresh or preserved truffle, or good sautéed cremini with a little truffle butter, keeps the dish sane.
"Not having too much" sauceThe pint of velouté is a starting quantity, to be reduced until it merely coats. A loose filling will not hold the dome shape or take a decoration.
YieldTwo lobsters of this size, with quenelles, serve four as a first course or two generously as a main.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this lobster sits in a long run of numbered variations — à la Duglère before it, à la Gambetta after — each distinguished only by its garnish and sauce. The naming convention is French restaurant practice imported wholesale: dishes were titled for patrons, statesmen, actresses and places, and a great many of the attributions in the book are no longer traceable to anyone in particular. What the recipe really shows is the grammar Ranhofer worked in: a mother sauce by number, a forcemeat by number, truffle cut into "fanciful" shapes for the surface, and the shell used as a serving dish. Lobster was plentiful and cheap on the American coast through much of the century, and it was labor, truffles and French technique — not the shellfish — that made this a Delmonico's dish.