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Lobster Saute, Colbert
Plunge two two-pound live lobsters in a gallon of boiling water with a tablespoon salt for twenty minutes. Drain and let cool off crack the shells from tails and claws, carefully pick out all the meat and cut into three-quarter-inch pieces.
Heat two tablespoons melted butter in a frying pan, add the lobster and season with a half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons cayenne pepper. Gently brown for five minutes, tossing quite frequently meanwhile. Add a half teaspoon each freshly chopped parsley and extract of beef, one and a half gills demi-glace and the juice of quarter of a lemon. Mix well, cook for ten minutes, add a half ounce butter in small bits, tossing a little while adding, pour into deep dish and serve.
A straightforward French sauté built on demi-glace, but the two timings in the original need attention: the lobster is cooked three separate times, and by the letter of the recipe it will be tough before it reaches the pan.
- Boil lessTwenty minutes for a two-pound lobster is far past done, and the meat then gets fifteen more minutes in the pan. A two-pounder needs about 10-12 minutes at a hard boil; pull it while slightly underdone since it finishes in the butter.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon, so two of them is a half teaspoon of cayenne for about a pound of picked meat. That is aggressive by modern taste; a quarter teaspoon is closer to what most cooks want.
- GillsA gill is a half cup, so one and a half gills of demi-glace is three-quarters of a cup.
- Demi-glaceThe book assumes a stockpot running in the kitchen. Use a good commercial demi-glace concentrate or reduce a cup of dark veal or beef stock with a spoonful of tomato until it coats a spoon.
- Extract of beefThis is the Liebig-style meat extract sold as Bovril or Better Than Bouillon, not bouillon cubes at cube strength. A half teaspoon of paste is what is meant; if you are using ready-made demi-glace, taste before adding any at all, as both are salty.
- The final butterThe half ounce of butter tossed in in bits enriches and glosses the sauce. The recipe does not say to take the pan off the heat, but keep it below a simmer while tossing; if it boils the sauce will separate and look greasy.
- Ten minutes of sauceCook the demi-glace down for the ten minutes, but lift the lobster out first and return it at the end, otherwise the meat stiffens while the sauce reduces.
- YieldTwo two-pound lobsters give roughly a pound of meat: four small plates as written, or two as a main course with rice or toast to take the sauce.
The name points to sauce Colbert, the classical meat-glaze-and-butter compound flavoured with lemon and parsley (and usually tarragon), part of the long list of French sauces bearing the name of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's finance minister — an attribution that is traditional rather than documented, like most of the ministerial sauce names. Its appearance in an international collection reflects how thoroughly the grand-hotel French repertoire had colonised American restaurant cooking, with demi-glace assumed as common currency and meat extract kept on hand as a shortcut to it. Dressing lobster in a brown veal sauce rather than serving it plain with butter was exactly the sort of move that carried it further upmarket.