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Lobster, American Style
Wash well two fresh lobsters of two pounds each; cut each one into twelve pieces. Place in a frying pan two tablespoons melted butter, and when thoroughly hot add the lobsters. Season with a level tablespoon salt and a light teaspoon paprika. Mix well with a wooden spoon and let cook for ten minutes, mixing occasionally.
Hash up very finely six sound shallots, half green pepper, the red part of a medium carrot, one bean garlic, two branches parsley, one saltspoon thyme, one sprig bay leaf, and add all to the lobster. Mix all well for one minute, then add half gill sherry, two tablespoons brandy and four medium, ripe, peeled, seeded tomatoes, cut into small pieces. Mix well again, cover the pan and let cook on a rather brisk fire for fifteen minutes. Dress on a hot dish and serve.
This is homard à l'américaine under an English name: lobster cut up raw in the shell, seared in butter, then finished in a shallot-tomato-brandy sauce. Two things decide whether it works — cutting the lobster raw so the juices go into the pan, and keeping the total cooking time short.
- Cutting up raw lobsterTwo 2-lb lobsters cut into twelve pieces each would mean something like claws and knuckles separated, the tail split crosswise into segments and the body halved; the recipe does not specify the division. Kill the lobster by driving a heavy knife through the head behind the eyes before jointing it. Reserve the green tomalley and any coral — classic versions stir them in at the end to thicken the sauce, though this recipe does not say so.
- The salt is highA level tablespoon of salt for four pounds of lobster still in the shell reads heavy to modern palates, especially as the shells and any reserved liquid are already saline. One to two teaspoons, with more added at the end, is closer to current practice.
- Gill and saltspoonA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of sherry is 1/4 cup (60 ml). A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon — that is the thyme measure. "One bean garlic" is one clove.
- A brisk fireMedium-high on a gas or induction hob, hot enough to keep the tomatoes and wine at a steady simmer rather than a stew. The pan is covered for this stage, so the liquid should reduce only modestly.
- Total cooking timeTen minutes in butter plus fifteen minutes covered is a long haul for lobster meat and will firm it up considerably. One modern approach is to lift the tail and claw pieces out once the shells turn red, let the sauce cook down on its own, and return the meat for the last two or three minutes.
- The brandyTwo tablespoons added to a hot pan will catch light if the flame reaches it. Either flambé deliberately, standing back and off the heat, or add it and let it boil off — the point is to burn away the raw spirit before the tomatoes go in.
- TomatoesFour medium ripe tomatoes, peeled and seeded, come to roughly a pound. Out of season, about a cup of drained good tinned tomatoes gives a better result than pale fresh ones.
- Yield and servingFour pounds of lobster in the shell serves four generously as a main course. Serve in deep bowls with the sauce spooned over, plus bread, finger bowls and shell crackers — there is no polite way to eat this.
Despite the name, this is the Franco-American dish usually written homard à l'américaine, and it has been argued over for more than a century: one camp traces the name to a Breton cook working in Paris who improvised it for late diners and called it after his home province, armoricaine, the other holds that it commemorates the American customers or the American-style seasoning of tomato, garlic and cayenne. Neither account is documented well enough to settle it, and the two spellings have coexisted on menus ever since. The technique is often said to resemble Provençal cooking, where crustaceans are jointed raw, seared in fat, and finished with tomato, garlic and brandy. Its appearance here reflects how thoroughly French restaurant practice had colonised American fine dining, and how cheap and plentiful lobster still was on the Atlantic coast.