No. 2534

Lobster or Spiny Lobster with Mayonnaise

Homard ou Langouste a la Mayonnaise

Cook a large lobster; drain and let get cold with the tail stretched out. Detach the large claws and divide the body lengthwise in two; remove the meats whole from each halved tail, and cut them up slanting, but without deforming them. Wipe well the empty tail shells and fill them half way with chopped jelly, then return the meats to the shells upside down so that the red part is uppermost. Suppress the black vein from the center of the bodies, also the creamy parts, and rub these through a sieve and add them to a mayonnaise sauce (No. 606). Dress the two halves of the lobster on a napkin or dish, and in the hollow space formed by the shells place a bunch of parsley leaves; on this dress the lobster claws in their shells, after suppressing half of them, and surround the lobster on the bottom of the dish with a string of chopped jelly, and around this lay either croutons of jelly or halved hard-boiled eggs filled with a salad of vegetables (No. 2650); serve the mayonnaise sauce separately.

← No. 2533 Lobster Tails in Their Shells Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2535 Mousselines of Foiles-Gras a la Dana →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cold buffet centerpiece from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen, built around presentation rather than cooking. The work is in the boning out, the aspic, and the sauce; almost none of it is heat.

Stretch the tail while it cooksStretch the tail -- A lobster curls as it boils, and a curled tail is hard to shell out in one piece or to dress flat. The usual remedy is to tie the lobster straight along a wooden spoon handle or thin board before it goes into the pot and leave it tied until cold. The recipe itself specifies only that it be left to get cold with the tail stretched out.
Cooking timeThe recipe assumes you know how to boil a lobster. For a 2-2.5 lb specimen, 12-15 minutes in heavily salted water at a bare simmer is right; larger, add about 3 minutes per additional pound. Overcooked lobster turns cottony and will not slice cleanly on the bias.
"Chopped jelly" is aspicThroughout The Epicurean, jelly in a cold savory dish means a clear meat or fish aspic set firm, then chopped coarse with a wet knife for glitter. "Croutons of jelly" are neat cubes or triangles cut from a sheet of the same aspic, not bread. Powdered gelatin in a good fish or chicken stock stands in without apology.
The creamy partsThese are the tomalley (green liver) and, in a hen lobster, the coral. Sieved into the mayonnaise they give it body, colour and a good deal of flavour. Note that tomalley can concentrate contaminants and marine biotoxins; state and federal advisories have recommended against eating it, so it can be left out, at the cost of the tint.
Mayonnaise No. 606Ranhofer's is a classic hand-whisked yolk-and-oil emulsion, uncooked. Since it is served cold and never heated, use pasteurized eggs if you are feeding anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised.
Spiny lobsterLangouste has no meaty front claws, so the passage about dressing the claws applies only to the clawed American or European lobster; with a spiny lobster you have only the two tail halves to work with. The recipe names both because either may be used.
Suppressing half the claws"Suppressing" in this translation means removing. Whether Ranhofer means omitting half of the claws or taking away half of each claw shell so the meat shows is not clear from the text.
YieldOne large lobster dressed this way serves four as a first course on a cold table, or two as a main dish. Assemble no more than an hour or two ahead and keep it refrigerated; the aspic weeps and the meat dries once it sits out.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records thirty-odd years of cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in the chapter on garnishings for cold dishes rather than among the fish recipes because that is what it really is: a set-piece for the buffet table, where cold food was judged first by how it looked. The technique of shelling a lobster tail, lining the empty shell, and returning the sliced meat to it "upside down so that the red part is uppermost" belongs to the grand hotel style of the late nineteenth century, when aspic was as much a building material as a sauce. The recipe names both homard and langouste: the clawed lobster of the North Atlantic and the clawless spiny lobster.