No. 208

Bisque of Lobster a la Portland

Bisque de Homard a la Portland

Cut twelve pounds of lobster lengthwise in two, break the claws, sprinkle over some butter, and cook them on a baking-sheet in a hot oven for twenty-five minutes. Remove them, and suppress the largest shells, pound the meat with its equal quantity of plain boiled rice, seasoned with salt, pepper, and curry, and when all is well reduced to a paste, dilute it with broth; strain through a sieve and then a tammy, and warm up the soup without boiling; thicken it with twelve hard boiled egg-yolks pounded with four ounces of butter, and mix in also a pint of double cream, and serve as garnishing some mushrooms cut into fine Julienne and lobster quenelles. Put the soup into a tureen.

Lobster Quenelles.—Cut one pound of cooked lobster meat in thin slices, add the coral and two ounces of butter; pound well and when reduced to a paste, take it from the mortar. Pound three quarters of a pound of panada, add gradually to it half a pound of butter, then the lobster paste, three eggs, one after the other, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and two tablespoons of Allemande sauce, test and rectify if necessary (No. 60). Roll this forcemeat to use for lobster quenelles, or else fill some sheeps' casings with it to make lobster boudins.

← No. 207 Bisque of Lobster a la Cambridge Soups & Broths No. 209 Bisque or Puree of Mussels a la Cutting (bis →

For the Modern Kitchen

A banquet-scale bisque from Delmonico's kitchen, built on the old method of thickening with rice and finishing with an egg-yolk liaison. Nearly everything here scales down cleanly except the ratios, which are worth respecting.

The hinge: never let it boil after the liaisonThe hinge: never let it boil after the thickening -- the recipe itself says to warm the soup "without boiling." Because the yolks here are hard-boiled and pounded with four ounces of butter, the risk is less true curdling than the butter breaking and the soup turning grainy. Keep it well below a simmer, stirring, and hold it in a bain-marie if it must wait.
Scale and yieldTwelve pounds of lobster in the shell is roughly four 3-lb lobsters or eight smaller ones; on this scale it is plainly a banquet soup for twenty or so as a first course, though the recipe gives no yield. Quartering the whole recipe gives a manageable domestic batch — 3 lb lobster, 3 yolks, 1 oz butter, half a cup of cream.
"A hot oven"Ranhofer gives no figures anywhere; read it loosely as a brisk oven, somewhere around 400-450F. Twenty-five minutes suits split lobsters of real size; smaller ones will be done sooner, and overcooked lobster meat pounds into a stringy paste rather than a smooth one.
"Suppress the largest shells"Suppress here means remove and discard — the heavy carapace and claw armour, which will not break down. The thin body shell and legs can go into the pounding, but a modern cook does better to simmer them into the broth used for diluting and keep them out of the paste.
Rice as the thickenerEqual weight of plain boiled rice to picked meat is the classic bisque liaison, from before flour roux took over. Cook the rice soft in the lobster broth rather than water so nothing is diluted.
Mortar, sieve and tammyA food processor does the pounding. The tammy was a fine worsted cloth through which the puree was wrung; a chinois pressed hard, then a pass through doubled cheesecloth, gives the same velvet texture.
CurryThe seasoning is curry powder, used as a background note rather than a flavour of its own; start with a small pinch per quart and taste. Period curry powders were not standardised, so blends varied considerably from jar to jar.
Double cream and coralIn an American kitchen of this date "double cream" means a rich cream; heavy whipping cream is the working substitute (British double cream today is a minimum 48% fat). The coral called for in the quenelles is the roe, which is present only in hen lobsters and turns from dark green to coral red on cooking; without it the forcemeat is paler but no worse.
Panada and AllemandePanada is the flour-and-milk or bread-and-milk paste that binds a quenelle forcemeat; make it stiff and cool it fully before working in butter. Allemande is a velouté finished with egg yolk and lemon — two tablespoons is a seasoning, and a good reduced fish velouté stands in.
Cooking the quenellesPoach a test spoonful in barely trembling salted water before shaping the rest, and correct the binding if it breaks up. Cook the shaped quenelles at 175-180F for a few minutes only; a rolling boil shreds them.

A Little History

This is Charles Ranhofer's, from The Epicurean (1894), the compendium of thirty-odd years running the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York. Bisque in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries meant a rich pounded soup of birds or crayfish thickened with bread or rice, and the name is generally traced to the Bay of Biscay, though that derivation is traditional rather than documented. Ranhofer gives a whole run of lobster bisques in sequence, each tagged with a place or patron name; the tell here is the garnish: julienned mushrooms and lobster quenelles, with the same forcemeat offered as boudins in sheep casings.