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Lobster a La Newburg (Cut the meat of a large boiled)
Cut the meat of a large boiled lobster into pieces a little less than an inch square. Rub the yolks of two hard boiled eggs to a smooth paste, with a tablespoonful of cream. Cook together in a saucepan two tablespoonfuls of butter and one tablespoonful of flour. Stir into this the paste made of the yolks, then slowly a cupful of cream, to which a pinch of soda has been added; when the cream reaches the boiling point put in the lobster meat, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Stir over the fire for a minute or two, add a wine-glass of sherry, and serve.
A short, rich lobster dish that depends almost entirely on heat control. Everything else is straightforward once the measures are translated.
- The hinge: keep it below a simmerHeat control -- The recipe does bring the cream to boiling point before the lobster goes in, but once the meat and sherry are added keep the pan at the barest simmer: prolonged boiling will tighten the lobster meat. The flour roux makes this sauce more forgiving than a raw-yolk version, but taking the pan off direct heat as soon as the meat is warmed through is safest.
- A wine-glass of sherryIn American books of this period a wine-glass is about 2 fluid ounces, or a scant quarter cup. Use a dry or medium sherry rather than a sweet cream sherry, which will make the sauce cloying.
- How much lobster"A large boiled lobster" means roughly a 1.5 to 2 lb whole lobster, yielding about 1/2 lb of picked meat. That is the right quantity for the single cup of cream here.
- The pinch of sodaAdded to guard against the cream curdling when it meets acid and heat. It is unnecessary with modern pasteurised cream and, in more than the barest pinch, gives a soapy, metallic edge. It can be left out.
- Yolk paste as thickenerThe mashed hard-boiled yolks are doing what a raw yolk liaison does in the restaurant version of this dish: enriching and thickening without further cooking. Push them through a sieve rather than merely mashing, or the sauce will be grainy.
- CreamUse heavy or whipping cream. Half-and-half or milk will not hold together against the sherry.
- Yield and servingServes three or four as a first course, two as a light main. This is a hot chafing-dish preparation; it was served on toast points, in puff-pastry shells, or over plain boiled rice.
Lobster Newburg is generally traced to Delmonico's in New York in the 1870s, where it is said to have been introduced by a sea captain named Ben Wenberg and renamed after a falling-out with the management left "Wenberg" unwelcome on the menu; the story is traditional and appears in several late-century accounts rather than in any contemporary document. Whatever its origin, the dish spread fast through American hotel dining and then into home cookery via the chafing dish, a fashionable late-Victorian piece of equipment that let a hostess cook at the table for a small late-evening party. The version here has been simplified for the domestic cook: instead of the raw egg yolks and butter of the restaurant original, it leans on a butter-and-flour roux with sieved hard-boiled yolks, which is far more forgiving of an uneven spirit flame.