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Lobster, Cardinal
Cut away the large and small claws from three small live lobsters of one pound each, split in two, remove gravel pouch from heads. Season bodies with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper, then lightly baste with oil. Arrange on a roasting pan, crack claws with cleaver and place on pan with rest, set in oven fifteen minutes. Remove the bodies only from pan and keep on a dish. Set claws in oven five minutes more, remove, let cool off, then pick out meat from shells, cut in dice, and keep on a plate. Cut two Spanish red peppers and six canned mushrooms in small dice and add to the cut lobster; add half a teaspoon chopped parsley, a teaspoon French mustard, one egg yolk, three saltspoons salt and one saltspoon pepper. Mix all well together, then spread the force over bodies of the lobster. Arrange on a tin, reduce three-quarters of a pint of tomato sauce to half quantity, add two egg yolks, sharply mix with whisk while heating three minutes. Let cool off a little. Evenly pour sauce over the six pieces of lobster, sprinkle two tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese over, set in oven ten minutes, remove, dress on a dish with a folded napkin, decorate with a little parsley greens and serve.
A stuffed half-lobster gratin from the era when a small one-pound lobster was the standard portion. The instructions assume a cook who knows a professional kitchen, so most of the missing information is temperature, timing and units.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. The seasoning here therefore runs to about 1/2 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp pepper on the bodies, then 3/4 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper in the stuffing.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as was usual in professional cookbooks of this period. A hot oven, around 425F, suits the initial fifteen minutes for the split lobsters; the final gratinating with cheese wants the same heat or a little more so the top colours within the ten minutes rather than the sauce breaking.
- The hinge: the egg-yolk sauceThe reduced tomato sauce is thickened with two yolks off the boil. Whisk them in over gentle heat only until the sauce coats the whisk, about three minutes as written, and never let it simmer — it will scramble and separate under the cheese.
- Three-quarters of a pintThat is 1 1/2 cups of tomato sauce, reduced to about 3/4 cup. Use a plain cooked tomato sauce, not a seasoned pasta sauce; the finished coating should be thick enough to sit on the shells.
- Spanish red peppersThese are pimientos — sweet, skinned, sold in jars. Two peppers is roughly 1/3 cup diced. Canned mushrooms are called for here and appear routinely in cookbooks of this period; sauteed fresh button mushrooms, well drained, are better, and six caps is about the same volume.
- French mustardDijon, smooth rather than grainy. One teaspoon is enough to be tasted against the tomato and Parmesan.
- Splitting live lobstersIf you would rather not split them live, chill them thoroughly first or dispatch them with a knife through the head behind the eyes. The "gravel pouch" is the stomach sac behind the eyes; remove it, and the tomalley if you dislike it.
- YieldSix filled halves from three lobsters — a first course for six, or a main for three with bread and a green salad. The folded napkin in the serving dish is period presentation and can be skipped.
"Cardinal" in classical French cookery means the red of a cardinal's robes, and it is normally attached to a sauce built on lobster: Escoffier's sauce cardinal is a bechamel worked with lobster essence, coral and butter, and dishes a la cardinal are usually finished with it. This version reaches the same colour by a shorter route, reducing tomato sauce and binding it with egg yolks in the manner of a gratin glaze, then browning it under Parmesan. The one-pound lobster called for is also of its period, when small chicken lobsters were cheap enough to serve one apiece as a course among many.