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Lobster, Haldeman
With the red part of a medium carrot, one green pepper, six medium, sound shallots and half saltspoon thyme, make a nice smooth hash. Boil two lobsters of one and a quarter pounds each for ten minutes in salt water. Drain, then split and pick out all the meat from each; cut the meat into one-inch pieces. Mix together one tablespoon very finely chopped parsley and half clove sound chopped garlic and keep apart. Heat in a large saucepan one tablespoon good oil, drop in the lobster and the first hash. Season with a teaspoon salt and a good saltspoon cayenne pepper, mix all well and cook on a brisk fire for ten minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile. Add the second hash, parsley and garlic and pour in two tablespoons brandy. Set fire with a match to the brandy and allow to burn till burned out. Add then a gill white wine and half gill pure tomato juice, strained. Mix well and let cook again for ten minutes on a brisk fire, gently mixing once in a while. Pour into a hot soup tureen and serve.
A lobster stew in the Delmonico manner, built on a fine vegetable hash and finished with brandy, wine and tomato. The measurements are Edwardian and the two "hashes" are confusingly named, so read the whole thing through before starting.
- The two hashesOnly one hash is actually made: carrot, green pepper, shallots and thyme. The "second hash" is the parsley and garlic mixture set aside earlier. Nothing is missing from the recipe.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, so the thyme is a scant 1/8 teaspoon and the cayenne a full 1/4 teaspoon. A gill is 1/2 cup, making it 1/2 cup white wine and 1/4 cup strained tomato juice.
- The red part of the carrotThis means the deep-coloured outer flesh, cut away from the paler fibrous core, a distinction period recipes often make for colour and sweetness; a whole modern carrot, finely diced, is no hardship.
- Total cooking timeTen minutes in the pot, then ten more after the flambé, on top of the initial boil, is far more heat than lobster meat wants. Par-boil the lobsters no more than five minutes so the shells release the meat, and think of the later stages as reducing the sauce rather than cooking the flesh.
- Brisk fireHigh heat, wide pan. The wine and tomato will reduce as they cook; stir gently so the lobster pieces are not broken up.
- The flambéWarm the brandy briefly before lighting, take the pan off the burner, and keep your face and any towel clear. Let it burn out on its own instead of blowing it out, or the raw spirit stays in the sauce.
- SeasoningA full teaspoon of salt is a good deal for two small lobsters already boiled in salt water. Season lightly at the start and correct at the end.
- Yield and serviceTwo 1 1/4 lb lobsters make a starter for four or a main course for two. The soup tureen suggests it was ladled at table; serve with bread or plain rice, since the sauce is the best part.
The International Cook Book belongs to the era when a chef's repertoire was catalogued by the hundred and individual dishes were named for the patrons who ordered them, so "Lobster, Haldeman" tells you less about a place than about a customer at a good American table around the turn of the twentieth century. The method itself is squarely the French treatment usually called lobster ericine: cut-up lobster hard-cooked in oil with a fine aromatic mince, flamed with brandy, then moistened with white wine and tomato. That combination is generally traced to Parisian restaurant cooking of the 1860s, and it reaches the reader here through Filippini, who spent his career in the Delmonico's orbit. The insistence on "sound" shallots and garlic is a period tic worth noticing: a cookbook writer reminded you to check that the alliums had not gone soft or sprouted before they went into an expensive dish.