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Lobster Coquilles, Indienne
Boil two live lobsters of two pounds each in salted water for twenty minutes, take up and let cool off; crack shells, pick out meat from them, and cut meat in half-inch pieces. Heat two tablespoons melted butter in a saucepan, and three level tablespoons flour, briskly stir, then add three-quarters of a pint hot milk. Season with teaspoon salt, half teaspoon curry powder, saltspoon cayenne and saltspoon grated nutmeg; briskly whisk and boil two minutes. Add the lobster and twelve sliced canned mushrooms, lightly mix and cook five minutes. Fill six individual table shells with preparation, sprinkle two tablespoons Parmesan or Swiss cheese over them, set in oven on a tin to bake ten minutes. Remove, dress on a dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A curried lobster gratin in shells, from the era when "Indienne" on a menu meant nothing more than a spoonful of curry powder in a bechamel. The measurements are workable once you translate the small spoons and the pint.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So a quarter teaspoon each of cayenne and nutmeg, which is assertive but not extreme against a sauce built on three-quarters of a pint of milk.
- Three-quarters of a pintAn American pint is 16 fl oz, so this is 1 1/2 cups of hot milk. Against 2 tablespoons butter and 3 tablespoons flour that gives a thick binding sauce, which is what you want in a shell.
- Table shellsThese are individual gratin dishes: real scallop shells, or the porcelain coquilles sold to imitate them. Small ramekins do the same job.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the filling is already cooked and only needs browning. Use 400F for the ten minutes stated, or run it under the broiler for two or three.
- Boiling the lobstersTwenty minutes for a two-pound lobster is on the long side by current practice; 15 to 18 minutes at a hard boil cooks it through, and the meat then goes back into hot sauce for five minutes more. Overcooked lobster turns fibrous and no amount of cream sauce hides it.
- Canned mushroomsThe recipe means twelve mushrooms, sliced, roughly one small can, drained. Fresh mushrooms sweated in butter first are better and closer to what the sauce wants; raw ones will weep into it.
- CheeseParmesan or "Swiss" here means Gruyere or Emmental. Two tablespoons total across six shells is a thin veil, enough to brown; a scant tablespoon each is nearer modern taste.
- YieldSix shells, which is a first course rather than a dinner. Four pounds of live lobster yields roughly three-quarters of a pound to a pound of picked meat.
- Folded napkinThe napkin on the serving dish steadies the hot shells and keeps them from sliding; it was also a standard presentation convention of the period.
Dishes labelled a l'indienne in turn-of-the-century hotel cookery were French, not Indian: curry powder had entered the professional repertoire as one more seasoning for a cream sauce, alongside paprika and nutmeg, and the label signalled the spice rather than any Indian technique. The shell service belongs to the same world. Coquilles were a standard way for a large kitchen to portion expensive shellfish, since a pound of picked lobster stretched across six shells with a thick bechamel behind it reads as generous. Canned mushrooms appear without apology because they were a reliable year-round pantry item and cost far less trouble than fresh. That this sits in a chapter called "The World's Kitchen" says a good deal about how broadly the period understood international cooking to be a matter of borrowing a seasoning and keeping the sauce.