No. 721

Puree of Lobster

Puree de Homard

Have two pounds of cooked lobster meat; pound it in a mortar with four ounces of butter, season with salt and red pepper, and rub through a sieve, stirring into the pulp six gills of well reduced bechamel (No. 409), heat it well, and just when about serving beat in two ounces of fine lobster butter (No. 580); color it a pale red.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A thick lobster puree from Ranhofer's garnish chapter — closer to a spreadable sauce or filling than a soup. The whole thing rests on the bechamel being reduced properly before the lobster goes in.

Six gillsA gill is half a cup, so six gills is three cups of bechamel — but well reduced, meaning reduced from a larger quantity to that volume, thick enough to coat a spoon heavily. Two pounds of lobster meat to three cups of sauce gives a stiff puree meant to hold its shape as a garnish or filling.
Mortar and sieveA food processor does the pounding in seconds, but still pass the pulp through a fine sieve or tamis afterward. Lobster meat holds fibrous strands that a blade will not break down, and the smoothness is the point of a puree.
Lobster butterRanhofer's No. 580 is a compound butter worked with lobster shell and coral; consult that entry for the method. The recipe has it beaten in "just when about serving," i.e. off the direct heat at the last moment, so the aroma is not driven off and the sauce does not split.
Red pepperIn an 1894 American kitchen this means cayenne, not black pepper and not a bell pepper. A pinch or two; it is there for warmth behind the shellfish, not heat.
Coloring it pale redThe recipe does not say what with; carmine was one of the red colourings available in kitchens of the period. Sweet paprika or a spoonful of tomato paste does the same job now and adds rather than subtracts flavor.
HeatWarm the puree gently and never let it boil. The bechamel is already cooked, the lobster is already cooked, and a hard simmer will make the meat grainy and squeeze water out of the sauce.
Yield and useAs Ranhofer intended it, this fills bouchees, coats or stuffs fish, or is piped as a garnish; thinned with fish stock or cream it moves toward a lobster bisque.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its garnish section is a catalogue of components rather than finished dishes — purees, butters, forcemeats and sauces cross-referenced by number so a cook could assemble a menu from parts. That numbering is why this entry sends you to No. 409 for bechamel and No. 580 for lobster butter and assumes both are already made. Lobster ran through the Delmonico's repertoire at a time when it was moving from cheap coastal protein toward the luxury it became; nothing here is thrifty, but the compound butter made from pounded shells and coral is a straight inheritance from French classical practice, where nothing edible on a crustacean was discarded. A puree like this one would have been kept in the larder to fill pastry cases, bind a fish garnish, or be let down into soup as service demanded.