Bisque of Lobster a la Cambridge

Select twelve pounds of small, live lobsters, eight of them in all; remove the claws and cook them apart in boiling, salted water for twenty-five minutes. Cut in slices crosswise the remainder of the lobsters, fry these pieces in butter on a hot fire, adding four tablespoonfuls of flour; when slightly colored, moisten with half a bottleful of white wine and two and a half quarts of broth, half a gill of brandy, salt and pepper. Cook all for fifteen minutes, then remove the meat from the shells, pound it to a paste, and dilute it with its own broth; strain through a sieve, and afterward through a tammy; mix in one quart of bechamel (No. 409); warm up without boiling, and just when ready to serve, thicken the soup with twelve raw egg-yolks diluted in a quart of cream, and when the soup thickens, incorporate into it a quarter of a pound of lobster butter (No. 580). Put the following garnishing into a soup tureen, and pour the soup over. Remove the meat from the boiled lobster claws, cut the red part of it in slices an eighth of an inch thick, and from these punch out rounds three-quarters of an inch in diameter, using a column tube for the purpose; also have small, round quenelles, half an inch in diameter, made from the fillets of a pike or whiting in the shape of round beads.