No. 206

Bisque of Lobster a la Benoist

Bisque de Homard a la Benoist

Mince very fine one medium carrots, one leek and two onions, fry them in butter and moisten with fat broth, or lean, some parsley sprigs, thyme, bay leaf, garlic, salt and black pepper. At the first boil, put in with this, twelve pounds of raw, live, and washed lobsters, continue to boil for thirty minutes, then drain them, break the shells, remove all the meat, reserve that from the claws, and pound the remainder with its equal quantity of wheaten grits. Make a light roux with four ounces of butter and five ounces of flour, moisten it with some of the broth the lobsters were cooked in, boil, skim, add this to the lobster preparation. Heat it up all together, then strain through a sieve and afterward through a tammy, warm it up again and just when ready to serve and very hot, stir into the bisque a piece of lobster butter (No. 580), and a quart of double cream. Put a garnishing into the soup tureen and pour the soup over; serve as a garnishing the lobster meat from the claws cut into small Julienne (No. 318), and small cream forcemeat quenelles, laid through a cornet on a buttered tin, and poached in a little boiling water.

← No. 205 Bisque of Lobster Soups & Broths No. 207 Bisque of Lobster a la Cambridge →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is cooking for a Delmonico's dining room, so the quantities are banquet-scale and several of the vessels and pantry items are house-specific. The structure is sound and translates directly if you scale it down and shorten the lobster cooking.

Scale it downTwelve pounds of live lobster is roughly eight to twelve 1- to 1½-lb lobsters, and with a quart of cream the finished soup will serve twenty or more. A quarter of the recipe — two lobsters, 1 oz butter, 1¼ oz flour, 1 cup cream — gives five or six servings and keeps the proportions intact.
Thirty minutes is too longThe lobsters here are being used to build the broth as well as to supply meat, but half an hour will leave the claw meat you are reserving for garnish stringy. Boil 10 to 12 minutes for 1½-lb lobsters, pull the meat, then return the broken shells to the court bouillon and simmer them another 20 minutes for flavour.
Wheaten gritsCracked or coarsely milled wheat, not American hominy grits and not semolina. It is there as a thickener pounded with the shell-and-body meat; cooked cracked wheat, or plain cooked rice, does the same job. It must be soft before pounding or it will never pass the sieve.
TammyA tammy is a fine worsted straining cloth, twisted between two people to force the soup through. A conical fine-mesh sieve followed by a doubled layer of muslin is the working equivalent; press hard, since the point is to extract everything the shells will give up.
Lobster butter (No. 580)Ranhofer's own preparation: the pounded shells and coral worked with butter, melted, and strained or clarified so the colour and flavour come through. It is what makes the soup rose-coloured rather than beige. Add it and the cream off the heat, or barely at a simmer — once the butter breaks, the surface goes oily.
"Fat broth, or lean"Fat broth is an unskimmed meat stock, lean is one without the fat, or in practice a light vegetable or fish broth. Either works; the lean version keeps the lobster flavour cleaner.
The quenelle garnish"Laid through a cornet" means piped from a paper cone in short lengths onto a buttered tray, then poached in water held just below a simmer. A piping bag with a small plain tip does it. Water at a full boil will break them apart.
Do not boil after the cream goes inThe soup is thickened with roux and enriched with cream and butter; brought back to a boil it will separate and the lobster flavour flattens. Heat to just below simmering, garnish the tureen, and pour over.

A Little History

Bisque in the nineteenth century meant a shellfish soup thickened with a starch pounded together with the shells and body meat — the practice of using rice or cracked wheat predates the modern habit of relying on cream and roux alone, and it is what gives Ranhofer's version its body. The name is generally traced to Biscay, though that derivation is traditional rather than documented, and earlier French usage applied "bisque" to game and poultry potages as well. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and author of The Epicurean (1894), catalogued his soups by garnish and dedication: this book carries bisques of lobster à la Benoist and à la Cambridge among others, each distinguished chiefly by what floats in the tureen. Dedicatory names of this kind were often given for a patron, a colleague, or a member of the house, though the person behind this one is not recorded here. What the recipe does record precisely is the labour of a brigade kitchen — pounding, sieving, and then tammying a soup before it reached the table.