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Bisque of Lobster and Shrimp
Cut the heads off two one-and-a-half-pound live lobsters, then cut them in one-inch pieces, shells and all. Thoroughly heat on an open fire one ounce butter, add the lobster with a finely sliced each carrot and onion and two sliced branches celery, stir well and cook for ten minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile. Pour in two tablespoons each brandy and sherry, set fire to liquors and stir with spatula until fire goes out. Place entire contents of pan in the mortar, pound to paste, then return to saucepan; add a branch parsley, sprig thyme, bay leaf, clove and two ounces raw rice. Moisten with two and a half quarts water, half gill white wine and a pint fresh, crushed tomatoes. Season with two teaspoons salt and two saltspoons cayenne pepper, mix well and let gently boil for one and a half hours, frequently mixing meanwhile. Press soup through sieve into a basin, then through Chinese strainer into saucepan, pour in half gill cream and let simmer. Remove shells from a half pint cooked shrimps, cut in half-inch pieces and add them to soup with half ounce butter, stir well while cooking for five minutes, remove, pour into a soup tureen and serve.
A classic shell-based bisque: the flavour comes from the shells, not the meat, and the rice does the thickening. Most of the translation work is in the vessels and the archaic small measures.
- The hinge: pound the shells, then strain twiceThe whole point of the mortar step is to fracture the shells so their flavour extracts into the liquid. A heavy-duty food processor pulsed hard, or a mortar if you have a large one, does the job; the two-stage straining afterwards (coarse sieve, then a fine chinois or a sieve lined with muslin) is what keeps grit and shell splinters out of the finished soup. Do not skip the second pass.
- Archaic measuresA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup — that applies to both the white wine and the cream. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, making two saltspoons roughly 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne, which is assertive but not extreme in 2 1/2 quarts of liquid.
- "An open fire"This means direct high heat over a flame rather than an oven or a water bath. A wide, heavy sauté pan over medium-high heat is the equivalent; you want the shells to turn deep red and start to caramelise in the ten minutes given.
- Flaming the brandy and sherryTake the pan off the heat before adding the spirits, then return it and ignite, standing back and keeping the extractor fan off. Stirring until the flame dies is the original's way of saying cook off the raw alcohol — about 30 seconds.
- The riceTwo ounces of raw rice (about 1/3 cup) is the thickener; there is no roux here. It must be fully broken down by the end of the simmer or the soup will strain thin, so keep the boil gentle and stir often, as instructed, since rice catches on the bottom.
- Cooked shrimpHalf a pint is a volume measure here, roughly 8 fl oz of cooked shrimp, which will yield somewhat less once peeled. They go in for five minutes only at the very end, in already-simmering soup, so they warm through rather than toughen.
- Lobster meatThe recipe cooks the lobster shells and all and discards the solids at the sieve, which is authentic but wasteful by modern habits. A modern cook may prefer to pick the tail and claw meat after the initial ten-minute sauté, set it aside, and return it diced at the end alongside the shrimp.
- Yield and finishStarting from 2 1/2 quarts of water plus a pint of tomatoes and the wine, and simmering 90 minutes, expect a noticeably reduced volume of finished bisque; the recipe does not say whether the pot is covered. The cream goes in at a simmer, not a boil, or it may separate against the wine and tomato.
Bisque is a thick shellfish soup thickened with rice or breadcrumbs rather than flour, and the name is generally traced to the Biscay coast, though that etymology is traditional rather than settled — an older sense of the word simply meant a rich purée-like soup. What marks this version as belonging to the professional French kitchen of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is the equipment it assumes: an open fire, a mortar large enough to pound a whole lobster, and a chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer still named "Chinese strainer" in period English texts. It also assumes live lobster as a matter of course, and treats the shells as the valuable part, with the meat as garnish.