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Lobster En Brochette with Fresh Mushrooms
Plunge two one-and-a-half-pound live lobsters in a gallon boiling water with a tablespoon salt for twenty minutes. Drain and let get cold. Crack all the shells, pick out the meat and cut into quarter-inch pieces. Have the same number small heads well picked and cleaned fresh mushrooms. Place the mushrooms in a frying pan with a half tablespoon butter and briskly fry for eight minutes, tossing well meanwhile. Squeeze in the juice of a quarter of lemon, mix well and remove. Arrange the lobster and mushrooms alternately on six skewers evenly, and season all around with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon paprika. Mix on a plate a half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley with the juice of half lemon, lightly turn the brochettes in it, just to flavour a little, then lightly roll in oil and finally in brad crumbs. Arrange on a double broiler and broil on a brisk fire for five minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish, spread a little maitre d'hotel butter over and serve.
A straightforward broiled skewer, but the lobster is cooked twice and the original timings assume a coal fire and a much smaller lobster than the number suggests. Adjust the first cooking or the finished dish will be dry.
- The hinge: don't boil the lobster twice overA 1½-pound lobster is fully cooked in 10-12 minutes in boiling salted water, not twenty. Since the meat then gets ten more minutes under the broiler, err short on the first cooking — pull it while the tail meat is just set.
- "A brisk fire"A hot broiler, close to the element. The crumbs should colour in the five minutes given; if they haven't, the heat is too low and the lobster is stewing in its coating.
- "Double broiler"Not a double boiler. This is a hinged wire grill basket that clamps the skewers between two grids so the whole set can be turned at once. A sheet pan with a rack and a pair of tongs does the same job.
- "Brad crumbs"A typesetting slip for bread crumbs. Fine dry crumbs are the likely intention.
- Mushrooms"Small heads well picked and cleaned" means button caps with the stems removed. Eight minutes of brisk frying in a half tablespoon of butter is aimed at driving off water so they hold on the skewer; use a wide pan and don't crowd them, or they steam.
- Maître d'hôtel butterAssumed knowledge in 1906: softened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, then chilled. A coin of it laid on the hot brochettes melts into a sauce.
- SkewersProbably metal. Wooden ones need a 30-minute soak, and even then the exposed ends will char under a hot broiler.
- YieldSix skewers from two lobsters — a first course for six, or a main course for three with rice or a green salad.
The International Cook Book is the work of Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and the recipe carries the marks of that kitchen: French terminology, a restaurant's confidence that the reader already knows what maître d'hôtel butter is, and a fondness for the American lobster dressed up in Continental technique. En brochette simply means "on a skewer," a term long established on English-language restaurant menus. Boiling the lobster, picking it, and then broiling it again is a doubling of labour and heat that says more about the economics of a professional brigade than about the fish. Paprika appears often in American hotel cookery of this period, giving pale seafood colour without heat.