No. 794

Lobster a la Boulognaise

Homard a la Boulognaise

Cut up some cooked lobster meat into small quarter inch squares, the same quantity of celery and finely chopped beet root. Mix all these with a little mayonnaise sauce (No. 606), adding to it chopped up chervil and tarragon and some red pepper. Range this on side dishes and sprinkle over the lobster coral finely chopped, or else the lobster sprawn and some chopped parsley.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer gives proportions only by relation — equal parts lobster, celery and beet — and assumes you have his mayonnaise recipe to hand. A few terms need translating before the dish will come together.

Scale itRanhofer gives no quantities. Two cooked lobsters of about 1 1/4 lb each will yield somewhere between 1 1/2 and 2 cups of picked meat; match that with an equal quantity of diced celery and of chopped cooked beet. Bound with roughly 3/4 cup mayonnaise, this will serve about six as a first course.
Cut size mattersThe quarter-inch dice governs the lobster and the celery; larger pieces of celery turn the salad watery and stringy. The beet Ranhofer wants 'finely chopped', finer still, which also limits how much it bleeds.
Beet rootCooked beet, not raw. Roast or boil, peel, cool completely, then dice and drain on paper before mixing, or the mayonnaise turns pink within minutes. Folding the beet in last, just before serving, keeps the colors distinct.
Red pepperIn nineteenth-century American kitchen French this means cayenne, not paprika and not a fresh capsicum. A pinch is enough.
Coral and "sprawn"Coral is the roe of a female lobster, dark green when raw and turning bright red when cooked; press it through a sieve for the garnish. "Sprawn" appears to be a variant or misprint for spawn, the eggs, which Ranhofer offers here as an alternative rather than as the same thing. Coral is not always to be had, in which case parsley is the practical garnish.
MayonnaiseNo. 606 is a hand-made mayonnaise of raw yolks, oil and vinegar. If serving anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised, use pasteurized eggs or a good commercial mayonnaise thinned with a little lemon.
HerbsChervil and tarragon both lose their perfume when chopped in advance. Chop them into the sauce at the last moment; dried tarragon is a poor substitute and dried chervil is worthless.
Serving"Range this on side dishes" means mounding it on small flat platters as part of a cold buffet. Keep it below 40F until it goes to the table and do not let it stand out more than two hours.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the cold side dishes are the working vocabulary of a restaurant that sent out long, elaborate buffets for private parties. The name a la Boulognaise is generally taken as a nod to Boulogne-sur-Mer, the great French fishing port on the Channel, though Ranhofer attaches it here to a preparation with no particular Boulonnais pedigree — French kitchens used place names loosely, as a shorthand for style. What the dish really shows is the American lobster's place in the period: a fashionable kitchen could dice it into salad. The pairing with beet, celery and a herbed mayonnaise is the standard salade russe logic of the era, applied to shellfish.