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Lobster Butter
Place shells and bodies of the two lobsters in mortar with an ounce good butter and pound to a paste. Remove, place in saucepan on fire, stir with wooden spoon until butter is thoroughly melted, then press butter through a cheesecloth into bowl containing some ice water. When the butter becomes entirely cold take up and squeeze out water with hands. Place in a hot bowl and briskly beat with wooden spoon until cold, then use as directed. N. B. Shrimp and crawfish butter are prepared in same way.
A classical compound butter that extracts colour and flavour from lobster shells. The recipe assumes you have just picked two lobsters for another dish and are salvaging the debris.
- The hinge: strain while hot, set while coldThe butter must be pressed through cheesecloth the moment it is fully melted, so the fat carries the shell's colour and aroma through while the grit stays behind. Dropping it straight into ice water sets it hard and lets the shell dust and juices sink away.
- Ratio is understatedOne ounce of butter to two lobsters' worth of shells looks low for a workable quantity. Comparable formulas use considerably more butter relative to the shell, which is closer to what the pounding and pressing steps actually require.
- "Two lobsters" is not a standalone quantityThe entry reads as though the shells and bodies are what is left after a lobster dish. Use the shells, legs, small claws and head debris from whatever you have, including the coral, which contributes colour.
- Mortar or machineA food processor breaks the shells faster than a mortar, though shell fragments will dull the blade over time. Either way the aim is a coarse paste, not a powder.
- "On fire" means over gentle heat"On fire" means over the fire, i.e. on the stove -- melt gently rather than hard. If the butter browns, the delicate shellfish aroma is lost and the colour turns muddy rather than coral.
- The hot bowl and wooden spoonBeating the recovered butter until it cools helps work out trapped water and gives a smooth paste for whisking into a sauce.
- Yield, keeping and useExpect a little less finished butter than the raw butter you started with. Roll it in parchment and refrigerate up to a week or freeze for several months; whisk cold pieces into bisque, sauce or a fish velouté off the heat, never over a boil.
Compound butters were a fixture of the professional French kitchen from the mid-nineteenth century, and beurre de homard was the standard means of putting lobster colour and flavour into sauces that could not carry more liquid: sauce cardinal, lobster bisque, the finish on a fish quenelle. The method exists because nothing in a restaurant larder was thrown away, and lobster shells hold a great deal of flavour along with the carotenoid pigments that turn fat a deep coral once warmed. Its appearance in The International Cook Book reflects the book's roots in the grand hotel and Delmonico's tradition of American cooking around 1900, where French technique was the working language of the kitchen; the closing note that shrimp and crawfish butter follow the same method is exactly how such a kitchen thought, in transferable procedures rather than fixed dishes.