No. 2830

Sweet Potatoes, Boiled and with Lobster Coral

Patates Bouillies et au Corail de Homard

This tubercle originally came from the island of St. Domingo, and may be prepared in various ways.

Boiled.-Wash, cut off the ends, and lay them in a large-mesh basket; cook them by steam for twenty minutes or else in boiling water. They can be served either in their skins or peeled.

With Lobster Coral.-After the sweet potatoes are boiled, cut them into olive-shapes; lay them in a vegetable dish, pour melted butter over, and strew the top with finely chopped lobster coral.

← No. 2829 String Beans with Butter Potatoes & Sweet Potatoes No. 2831 Sweet Potatoes Souffled and Sweet Potato Cro →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two preparations in one entry: plain boiled or steamed sweet potatoes, and the same potatoes cut into neat ovals, buttered, and dusted with lobster coral. Nearly everything hinges on the coral being cooked and dry enough to crumble.

Lobster coralThe coral is the roe of a female lobster, dark green when raw and coral red once cooked. Take it from a lobster that has been fully boiled or steamed, and press it through a fine sieve so it falls as a dry powder rather than a paste; raw coral has neither the colour nor the texture the dish depends on.
Cooking timeTwenty minutes of steam will only suit fairly small sweet potatoes, of roughly 6 oz; larger ones, or the long thick roots common now, are likely to need considerably longer. Test with a skewer at the thickest point, not at the tapered end.
Olive shapesCutting to olive-shapes means trimming each piece with a paring knife into a small tapered oval (the modern turned shape is conventionally cut with seven faces, though Ranhofer says only 'olive-shapes'). Boiled sweet potato is soft and crumbly, so cool the potatoes until just warm before shaping, or steam them whole and slightly underdone, shape, then reheat briefly in butter.
Melted butterRanhofer means clarified or simply melted butter poured over as a sauce, not a beurre monte or hollandaise. Allow about 2 oz butter per pound of potatoes, and pour it on hot so the coral clings.
Steaming basketThe large-mesh basket is a steamer insert. Any perforated pan liner or folding steamer works; keep the potatoes above the water so they do not waterlog.
SkinsThe recipe trims the ends before cooking; it gives no reason, but the tapered tips are usually the toughest and least worth serving. If serving in the skins, choose evenly sized roots so they finish together.
YieldNo quantity is given. Two pounds of sweet potatoes and the coral of one large lobster serve six as a side dish.
On the St. Domingo claimThe sweet potato was not native to Hispaniola; it was domesticated in tropical Central and South America and spread through the Caribbean long before Europeans arrived. The attribution reflects nineteenth-century garden lore, not modern botany.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house habit of taking a plain American vegetable and finishing it in the French manner: turned to uniform ovals, sauced with butter, and given a coloured garnish. Lobster coral turns up throughout classic French cookery pounded into beurre de homard or sieved over dishes as a dust. Sweet potatoes themselves were a staple of the American South, and Ranhofer's short note on their origin, mistaken as it is, reflects the era's fondness for tracing every vegetable to a single island.