No. 2261

Lobster Cutlets a la Shelley, or with Cream Sauce

Cotelettes de Homard a la Shelley, ou a la Sauce a la Creme

Cook in a court bouillon (No. 38) one lobster of two and a half pounds, take out all the meat, cut one pound of this into three-sixteenths inch squares, add to it half a pound of cooked mushrooms cut the same as the lobster, and mix this salpicon with a veloute sauce (No. 415), reduced with mushroom essence (No. 392), and into which has been added a little meat glaze (No. 402); season, stir well over the fire, and when the preparation reaches boiling point, pour it into a vessel to get cold. Have a bottomless cutlet mold five-eighths of an inch high by three and three-quarters inches long and two inches wide; butter and lay it on a piece of buttered paper slightly larger than the mold, garnish the bottom and sides with a light layer of pike forcemeat (No. 90), set the salpicon in the center and cover with more forcemeat; poach this lightly, unmold and set it aside till cold, then dip it in beaten eggs, then in bread-crumbs; fry in clarified butter, drain and serve on napkins with favor frills (No. 10) and a separate lobster sauce (No. 488) containing chopped truffles.

With Cream Sauce.—Have a lobster croquette preparation (No. 880), mold it to the shape of a cutlet, bread-crumb and fry the sauce as for the above; when a fine color, dress the cutlets and garnish with favor frills (No. 10), serving them with a separate cream sauce (No. 454).

← No. 2260 Cutlets of Kingfish, Mayonnaise Mousseline Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2262 Cutlets of Pheasant a la Reginald →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a Delmonico's kitchen note rather than a home recipe: it assumes a brigade with velouté, fish forcemeat and lobster sauce already standing by, and it cross-references half a dozen other numbered preparations. The work is all in the mise en place; the assembly is quick.

The hinge: chill everything hardThe salpicon must be cold and set before it goes into the mold, and the poached cutlet must be cold again before breading. A warm, soft interior will burst the crumb coating in the butter and the cutlet will collapse.
Lobster yieldA 2½ lb lobster gives roughly 8 to 12 oz of picked meat, so probably less than the pound the recipe calls for. Plan on two lobsters of that size, or one larger one, to get a full pound of dice.
Three-sixteenths of an inchA salpicon is a dice of uniform, deliberately small size — here about 5 mm. Cut the mushrooms and lobster to the same gauge; the point is that no single element reads separately on the palate.
The supporting preparationsCourt bouillon is salted water with white wine, aromatic vegetables and herbs. Velouté here is a fish or white stock sauce thickened with blond roux; mushroom essence is the strained, reduced liquor from cooking mushrooms; meat glaze (glace de viande) is stock reduced to a syrup — a spoonful of commercial demi-glace concentrate stands in for it.
Pike forcemeatRanhofer's No. 90 is a pounded pike forcemeat of the quenelle type, bound with a panada. Pike is hard to source; whiting, pollock, sole or additional lobster all work. It should be smooth and just firm enough to hold a shape, and it must be kept very cold while worked.
The moldA bottomless cutlet mold is simply a metal cutlet-shaped ring, about 1.5 cm high. Any ring or a shaped strip of stiff foil on buttered parchment does the same job; the shape is cosmetic, and hand-molding, as the cream-sauce version allows, is equally correct.
"Poach this lightly"The forcemeat needs only to set — a few minutes in barely trembling water or a low oven with a little stock, until the surface is opaque and firm to the touch. Overcooked fish mousseline turns dry and grainy.
FryingClarified butter is specified because whole butter's milk solids scorch before the crumb browns. Shallow-fry over moderate heat until an even gold; the filling is already cooked, so the frying is purely for color and crust.
Favor frills and yieldThe paper frill (No. 10) clipped to the end is Victorian dress and can be skipped. A pound of lobster with half a pound of mushrooms, cased in forcemeat, will make ten or more cutlets at the size of mold specified, depending how thickly they are cased.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house style exactly: a luxury ingredient cut fine, bound in a reduced sauce, cased in a pale fish forcemeat, shaped to imitate something it is not, and sent out under a French name. Cutlets moulded from a salpicon were a standard nineteenth-century restaurant conceit — the diner gets the silhouette of a chop and the texture of a croquette. Ranhofer named a great many dishes for Delmonico's patrons and for figures in public life; à la Shelley is generally taken to be one of these personal dedications rather than a technique, and the book gives no explanation, as it rarely does. The numbered cross-references are the real signature of the volume: nothing here is meant to be cooked from a standing start, and the reader is assumed to have a stockpot, a forcemeat and a velouté already in hand.