No. 2363

Souffle of Lobster in Cases

Souffle de Homard en Caisses

Plunge a two-pound lobster into boiling water so as to kill it quickly, and when cold split it lengthwise in two, take out the meat from the half tails, cut it up and pound the pieces with two or three spoonfuls of good reduced veloute sauce (No. 415); finish with some red butter (No. 580), adding also a piece of fresh butter: press this through a sieve, and put the puree back into the mortar, and with the pestle pound it well to make it have a good, consistent body, allowing it to absorb very slowly three gills of good raw cream; season and finally add two spoonfuls of the creamy part from the bodies, a dash of cayenne pepper and two spoonfuls of whipped cream. With this preparation fill either some round buttered paper (No. 439), silver (No. 438) or porcelain cases, wiped dry and buttered; dredge over the insides with bread-crumbs and fill the cases and lay them on a baking sheet; push them into a slack oven and let the preparation cook from fifteen to twenty minutes; it should be cooked in a very hot oven, otherwise it will become black. After taking the souffles from the oven, glaze the surfaces with a little of the same reduced veloute sauce, finish with red butter (No. 580), and serve them at once.

← No. 2362 Souffle of Game a la Lucie Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2364 Souffle of Partridge a la Haggins →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's "souffle" here contains no eggs at all — it is a lobster mousseline set by the protein in the meat and lightened only with whipped cream, so expect a delicate set rather than a dramatic rise. Nearly everything else in the recipe depends on cross-references to other numbers in The Epicurean.

The contradiction in the ovenThe text says to use a slack oven and then, in the same breath, that it "should be cooked in a very hot oven, otherwise it will become black" — an error somewhere in the original or its typesetting. A slack oven is usually reckoned at somewhere around 250-300F; a moderate 325F is a reasonable working compromise, since a mousseline of this kind curdles and weeps if driven hard.
GillsA gill is half a cup, so three gills is a cup and a half of raw cream — a large amount against the tail meat of one two-pound lobster. Add it slowly as instructed and stop when the puree is thick enough to hold a spoon upright; the full quantity may loosen it past the point where it will set.
Red butter (No. 580)A compound butter coloured and flavoured with lobster coral, pounded with butter and passed; Ranhofer gives the method at No. 580. It supplies both the colour and much of the shellfish depth, so it is not an optional garnish.
Veloute (No. 415)A white veal or chicken veloute, reduced until quite thick. A well-reduced fish veloute is closer to modern practice for shellfish, but keep it stiff — thin sauce will stop the mixture setting.
The creamy part from the bodiesThe tomalley, the green liver in the body cavity, along with any coral. It is edible and traditional, though tomalley concentrates contaminants and is generally advised against in quantity; two spoonfuls is small, and it can be left out.
Mortar and sieveThe pounding, sieving and second pounding exist to get an absolutely smooth paste. A food processor does the same work in a minute; still pass the puree through a fine sieve afterwards, since fragments of tail sinew will not break down.
CasesNos. 438 and 439 are silver and buttered-paper cases — small individual moulds, roughly ramekin size. Butter them, dust with fine crumbs, and fill only to the rim; the mixture puffs a little but will not climb.
Timing and yieldFifteen to twenty minutes as directed will set small cases; test with the point of a knife, which should come out clean and hot. One two-pound lobster with a cup and a half of cream should fill roughly six to eight ramekins.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this dish sits in a long run of souffles — of game, of partridge, of chicken — that were the fashionable light entree of the American gilded-age menu. Caisses means "cases": small individual moulds of silver, porcelain or oiled paper, which allowed the kitchen to send out one portion per diner rather than a single dish to be carved at table. The technique itself is French classical mousseline work — pounded flesh, sieved, mounted with cream — and it is what a nineteenth-century professional kitchen did with lobster tail. Lobster butter, made from the coral and shells that would otherwise be discarded, reflects a brigade kitchen's habit of extracting a second dish from the trimmings of the first.