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Lobster Saute, Finnoise
Boil two two-pound live lobsters in a gallon water with a tablespoon salt for twenty minutes. Lift up and let cool off, crack shells from claws and tails, carefully pick out all the meat and cut into half-inch pieces. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in a frying pan, add one finely chopped, seeded green pepper and gently brown for two minutes, then add the lobster. Season with a half teaspoon salt and saltspoon cayenne pepper, brown for five minutes, then pour in two gills pure, fresh tomato juice, lightly mix and let boil for eight minutes. Knead an ounce butter with three-quarters ounce flour, then gradually add to the lobster, continually mixing while doing so, cook for five minutes more, place in a chafing dish or soup tureen and serve.
A straightforward chafing-dish saute, but the cooking times are cumulative and the lobster suffers for it. Read the whole method before you start and shorten the boil.
- The hinge: total cooking timeThe lobster meat is boiled 20 minutes, then browned 5, simmered 8, and cooked 5 more — nearly 40 minutes of heat. Boil the lobsters 10-12 minutes for two-pounders, and treat the final sauce stages as reheating rather than cooking.
- GillsA gill is half a cup, so two gills is 1 cup of tomato juice. Fresh juice pressed through a sieve is thinner than canned; canned juice will need less reduction.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. A full quarter teaspoon of cayenne is assertive by modern palates — start with an eighth and adjust at the end.
- Kneaded butter and flourThis is beurre manie: 1 oz butter (2 tablespoons) worked cold into 3/4 oz flour (about 3 tablespoons). Add it in pea-sized pieces off a hard boil and whisk each one in, or it will lump.
- Killing and boilingA gallon of water and a tablespoon of salt is light seasoning for two lobsters; a heavier hand, closer to 1/2 cup per gallon for something near seawater strength, seasons the meat better. Use a pot large enough that the water returns to the boil quickly.
- Green pepperTwo minutes in butter will soften a chopped bell pepper but not sweeten it. Give it 5-6 minutes over moderate heat before the lobster goes in if you want the raw edge gone.
- Tomalley and coralThe recipe says to pick out all the meat and ignores the rest. The green tomalley and any coral can be mashed into the beurre manie for colour and depth, as some period lobster cookery did.
- YieldTwo two-pound lobsters give roughly 3/4 to 1 lb of picked meat: four servings as a main course with rice or toast, six or more as a chafing-dish course.
The International Cook Book is generally attributed to Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it arranges dishes under national labels in the manner of the grand-hotel kitchens of the period, where every plate carried a French garnish name. Finnoise means simply "Finnish style"; here the label seems to rest on the sweet pepper and tomato. The dish also shows the American chafing-dish vogue at its height around 1900: shellfish cooked down in a butter-thickened tomato sauce, carried to the table in the vessel it finished in, and served as a supper course.</span>