No. 2374

Lobster Tart or Pie a la a Herault

Tarte de Homard a la A. Herault

Boil two two-pound lobsters in a court-bouillon (No. 38); drain, and let get cold; detach the tails and claws; remove all the creamy parts and rub them through a fine sieve, then pick the meat from the tails and claws, and cut them into slices. Partly fry two ounces of shallot cut into one-eighth of an inch squares, with two ounces of butter; when partially fried add half a pound of chopped fresh mushrooms, and let fry together; pour in a quart of allemande sauce (No. 407), season with salt, nutmeg and cayenne, also chopped parsley, and mix well, adding the creamy parts and the pieces of lobster; transfer all this into a deep pie dish (Fig. 183), and set on the edge, slightly dampened, a narrow puff paste (No. 146) band, and over all a layer of puff paste fragments; cut it away evenly all around the outer edge, and decorate the top with leaves made of paste; pinch the edges around the pie, and egg over the surface twice, then cook it for twenty to thirty minutes in a hot oven, and serve as soon as it is done.

← No. 2373 Lamb Minion Fillet Tart or Pie a la Manning Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2375 Leg of Mutton Tart or Pie, Canadian →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Ranhofer entrée that assumes a stocked professional kitchen: two cross-referenced preparations (court-bouillon and allemande) are folded into the method as if they were pantry staples. Sort those out first and the pie itself is straightforward.

Allemande sauceNo. 407 is a velouté — light stock thickened with blond roux, reduced, then finished with an egg-yolk and cream liaison and lemon. A quart is a great deal of sauce for two lobsters; make the full amount only if you want a very saucy pie, otherwise a pint is ample and the filling will hold together better under pastry.
Court-bouillonNo. 38 is water with white wine or vinegar, carrot, onion, herbs and salt. Two-pound lobsters need roughly 12–15 minutes at a bare simmer; longer and the tail meat toughens before it ever reaches the oven.
The creamy partsThis means the tomalley (the green liver) and, in a hen lobster, the coral. Sieving them into the sauce is what gives the dish its colour and depth. If the tomalley smells anything but sweet, discard it — and note that current advisories recommend limiting tomalley consumption because it concentrates contaminants.
Puff paste fragments"Fragments" renders rognures, the re-rolled trimmings from earlier puff pastry work. They rise less evenly than virgin paste. Ready-made all-butter puff, rolled about 1/8 inch, does the same job.
A hot oven425–450°F. The pie is in only twenty to thirty minutes, which is enough to colour and cook the pastry but not to heat a cold filling through — let the lobster mixture cool to just warm rather than fridge-cold before covering, and it will come out right.
Egg over twiceTwo coats of beaten egg, the second after the first has dried, give the deep lacquered finish expected of a nineteenth-century entrée. Keep the wash off the cut edges of the paste or the layers seal and will not lift.
Shallots and mushroomsTwo ounces of shallot is about four small ones; half a pound of mushrooms should be cooked until their water has gone and they begin to catch, or the filling will thin out under the crust.
YieldTwo two-pound lobsters and a quart of sauce make a substantial pie for six to eight as a course in a longer meal, four as a main dish.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in print, which is why so many of its dishes carry a personal dedication — "à la A. Hérault" names someone whose identity the book does not bother to explain, on the assumption that readers in the trade would know or not care. The recipe belongs to a long run of hot savoury pies in the Miscellaneous Entrées section, all built on the same principle: a cooked protein bound in a rich mother sauce, put in a deep dish and capped with puff paste rather than lined with it. Allemande, a velouté finished with egg yolks, was one of the standard sauces of the classical kitchen in Ranhofer's day; Escoffier would later demote it from the roster of grand sauces, and it is largely why a dish like this reads as elaborate now when it would have been routine then.