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Lobster, Provencale
Cut off heads from two live lobsters of two pounds each. Cut in twelve even pieces each Heat two tablespoons oil in a large sautoire, adding one finely chopped onion and the lobster. Season with teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper, then briskly cook ten minutes. Pour in half pint white wine, add one teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, half teaspoon chopped chives and half a bean chopped garlic. Stir well, cover pan and cook ten minutes. Add one gill tomato sauce, lightly mix and cook ten minutes longer. Dress lobsters and all the contents of pan on a large hot dish and serve.
A brisk sauté of lobster in oil, wine, garlic and tomato, written for a cook working over a hot range with a live lobster in hand. The measurements are Escoffier-era shorthand and the timings are longer than a modern cook would want.
- SautoireA sautoire is a straight-sided sauté pan, wider than deep, not a saucepan. A 12-inch skillet or a shallow braiser with a lid does the same work; the pieces need to sit in one layer or they steam rather than sear.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three of them is three-quarters of a teaspoon of pepper — assertive but correct for two lobsters. A gill is half a cup. Half a pint of white wine is one cup.
- "Half a bean garlic"Most likely an awkward rendering of gousse d'ail, a clove. Half a clove for two lobsters is restrained; a Provençal cook today would use two or three.
- Tomato sauceNot a jarred pasta sauce. At this date the term normally means the classical thickened tomato sauce of the professional kitchen -- tomato cooked down with a little stock and roux. Passata reduced by a third, or a thick plain tomato purée loosened with stock, is the closest substitute.
- The timingsThirty minutes of total cooking will give you firm, dry lobster. The meat is done within eight to ten minutes of hitting the pan. Sear the pieces, build the sauce, and return the lobster to it only at the end — or accept the older texture, which the recipe clearly expects.
- Cutting up the lobsterThe recipe removes the heads first, then cuts each body into twelve pieces; in practice that means severing the claws and cutting the tail crosswise at the shell joints, with the body divided up as well.
- OilOlive oil is intended here — this is a Provençal dish and the oil is part of the flavour, not just a cooking medium.
- YieldFour pounds of lobster in the shell will serve two to four as a main course, or six as a first course. Serve it in a wide shallow dish with the pan juices poured over, and bread to deal with them.
Homard à la Provençale is one of the standard lobster preparations of the French professional repertoire, and its markers are the ones you see here: olive oil rather than butter, garlic, tomato, white wine, chopped fine herbs. It belongs to the same family as lobster à l'américaine — pieces of lobster cut in the shell and finished fast in a sauce. The instruction to begin with live lobsters was not squeamishness on the author's part but practical necessity, since lobster spoils quickly once dead.