No. 1036

Small Spiny Lobster Tails a la Monte Carlo (queues de Petites Langoustes a la Monte Carlo

Cut a few fresh mushrooms into large dice, and cook them with butter and lemon-juice; poach a few dozen large oysters, cut them up into three-eighths of an inch squares, and strain their broth. Cook twelve ounces of picked rice in some fish stock (No. 195), mixed with the oyster and mushroom broths, and a coffeespoonful of red pepper (No. 168); have it when done, the consistence of a Creole rice. Keep in boiling water seven or eight small spiny lobsters, each one weighing ten ounces; drain, and detach the tails from the bodies; put the latter back into the water to cook for ten minutes longer, then drain and pick out all the creamy parts. Split each tail in two lengthwise, both meat and shells, keep all the water running off from the meat, and fry these halved tails in a sautoire for five or six minutes with some oil and chopped shallots; season, and dredge over a little red pepper; moisten them to their height with good court bouillon (No. 38) and white wine, add some mushroom peelings, a garnished bunch of parsley, a lemon pulp, and two chopped tomatoes, and allow the liquid to boil rapidly for five or six minutes, then drain off the halved tails, so as to take out the meats and keep them warm. Strain the lobster broth, stir into it the water reserved from the meats, and reduce it to a half-glaze, then thicken it, first with a little veloute sauce (No. 415), and afterward with a thickening of egg-yolks, cream, and two or three spoonfuls of the creamy parts; butter the sauce off the fire without ceasing to stir. After the rice is done to perfection, pour over it a few spoonfuls of hazelnut butter (No. 567), and let it smother for five or six minutes; stir in the oysters and mushrooms; dress this rice into a vegetable dish, smooth the surface dome-shaped, and in the center stick standing three or four large crawfish; around these dress the half tails almost upright, and cover over with a little of the sauce, serving the surplus in a sauce-boat. Should the spiny lobsters have to be replaced by small ordinary lobsters, then the lobster claws must be substituted for the crawfish and be stuck into the summit of the dome.

← No. 1035 Lobster a la Lawrence and Maryland Lobster No. 1037 Lobster a la Newberg or Delmonico →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stockpots already going, and half the recipe lives in cross-references. Read it as three components — a rice pilaf, braised split tails, and an egg-thickened lobster sauce — and it becomes manageable for one cook.

The hinge: the liaisonOnce the reduced lobster broth has been thickened with egg yolks and cream, it must not boil. Hold it below about 180F, stir constantly, and whisk in the cold butter off the heat or the yolks will scramble and the sauce will break.
What the numbers meanA coffeespoonful is roughly half a teaspoon; "red pepper" (No. 168) is cayenne. Twelve ounces of rice is about 1 3/4 cups dry, which will serve eight generously alongside the tails.
Spiny lobsters, sizedSeven or eight 10-oz spiny lobsters means small whole animals, not the frozen tails sold today; that is four and a half to five pounds of live weight in all. Eight small warm-water rock lobster tails of 5-6 oz each gives a comparable yield of meat. Ranhofer's closing note allows small ordinary lobsters in place of the spiny ones, with the claws then replacing the crawfish garnish, so he plainly expected the swap.
"The creamy parts"This is the tomalley and, in females, the coral from the head sections — hence returning the bodies to the water for ten further minutes. Two or three spoonfuls go into the sauce as a thickener and colorant. Modern advisories discourage eating tomalley in quantity because it concentrates contaminants; the sauce works without it, thickened with a little more velouté.
OystersPoach them only until the edges ruffle, well under a minute, then lift them out and reserve the liquor. They are added to the rice at the very end for the same reason: another five minutes of heat turns them to rubber.
Missing recipes, in shortNo. 195 fish stock is, in the usual form, a fumet of bones, aromatics and white wine; No. 38 court bouillon will be water with wine, aromatic vegetables, herbs and salt; No. 415 velouté a white roux let down with stock. No. 567, "hazelnut butter," is beurre noisette — butter cooked to a nut-brown, no hazelnuts involved.
"The consistence of a Creole rice"Ranhofer does not explain the phrase; read it as separate, well-swollen grains that still hold together enough to be mounded. Cook the rice in the combined fish, oyster and mushroom broths until barely tender, then let it smother with the brown butter for five or six minutes before folding in the oysters and mushrooms.
AssemblyThe rice is dressed into a vegetable dish and smoothed dome-shaped, with crawfish or claws standing at the summit and the split tails set almost upright around them. The tails are braised and served in the shell. Sauce them lightly and pass the rest, as the recipe directs.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the restaurant's working repertoire set down in print, cross-referenced like a technical manual. The Monte Carlo name is usually taken to belong to a wave of late-nineteenth-century dishes christened after fashionable Riviera destinations, a naming habit often said to have flourished once the Monte Carlo casino and its hotels made the principality a byword for luxury among the same American travelers who dined at Delmonico's — though this remains a plausible surmise rather than a documented lineage. The dish itself is Mediterranean in bones: langouste, the clawless spiny lobster of the French and Italian coasts, was the standard luxury crustacean there, while the clawed Homarus of the North Atlantic was the American one, hence the note on substituting claws for the crawfish garnish. That instruction is a small record of a New York kitchen cooking European recipes with local shellfish. The rice "of the consistence of a Creole rice" is another Americanism, nodding to New Orleans practice in a book that otherwise speaks classical French.