Home › The World's Kitchen › Coquille of Lobster, Parisienne
Coquille of Lobster, Parisienne
Boil two live lobsters of two pounds each in salted water for twenty minutes; take them up and let cool off. Pick out all the meat from the shells, after splitting them and cracking the claws; then cut the meat into pieces half an inch long. Heat two tablespoons melted butter in a saucepan, add three level tablespoons flour. Stir briskly, then add three-quarters of a pint hot milk. Season with a teaspoon salt, a saltspoon cayenne pepper and one saltspoon grated nutmeg; briskly whisk and let boil for two minutes. Then add the lobster and twelve sliced canned mushrooms, gently mix and let boil for five minutes.
Fill up six individual table shells with the lobster. Sprinkle two tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese over the preparation. Place the shells on a tin, set in an oven to bake for ten minutes. Remove, dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A straightforward lobster gratin in béchamel. The only real pitfalls are the doubled cooking of the lobster and the vague vessel called for at the end.
- Don't cook the lobster twiceTwenty minutes for a 2 lb lobster is already at the long end; another five minutes simmering in sauce plus ten in the oven turns it fibrous. Boil 10-12 minutes, or fold in gently cooked meat and heat it only until the sauce is hot through.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is roughly 1/4 teaspoon. A quarter-teaspoon of cayenne across six portions is assertive but not unreasonable; the same quantity of nutmeg is generous, and a scant pinch reads better to modern palates.
- Three-quarters of a pintIn American measure that is 1 1/2 cups of hot milk against 2 tablespoons butter and 3 tablespoons flour, a medium-thick coating sauce that will hold in the shells; note the butter is a tablespoon short of the flour.
- "Table shells"Individual scallop shells or small ovenproof coquille dishes; ramekins work. Cleaned lobster half-shells can be used, but two lobsters yield only four, not the six the recipe fills.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. Bake at 400F for the ten minutes stated, or run them under the broiler for two or three minutes if the filling went in hot — the point is browning the Parmesan, not cooking anything.
- Canned mushroomsA common shelf item in professional kitchens of the period and mild by design. The recipe means twelve whole canned mushrooms, sliced, roughly one small can; 4 oz of fresh button mushrooms, sliced and sautéed in butter until their water has gone, is a direct substitute.
- YieldSix as a first course. Two 2 lb lobsters give roughly 3/4 to 1 lb of picked meat.
- The folded napkinA service convention, not a garnish: the napkin keeps the hot shells from sliding on the platter. A rack of coarse salt does the same job now.
The coquille y French for shell y is a service form rather than a dish, and by the late nineteenth century almost anything bound in a cream sauce, capped with cheese or crumbs and browned could be sent out in one. Naming it Parisienne signalled something like what Newburg or Am"u00e9ricaine did on an American menu of the period, though Newburg was itself an American coinage rather than a French one: this is the French-hotel treatment, in contrast to the plain boiled lobster of a New England shore dinner. The recipe belongs to the era when canned mushrooms and grated Parmesan were shelf staples in a professional kitchen while fresh lobster still had to arrive alive.