Lobster Medallions with Tarragon Butter

Don't overcook lobster - it becomes rubbery quickly. The medallions should be just opaque in the center. Cold butter melting over hot lobster creates the sauce at the table. Chervil or chives can substitute for tarragon.

Lobster has been a luxury ingredient in American and European cooking for centuries, though its status as an elite food is relatively recent: in colonial-era New England, lobsters were so plentiful that they were used as fertilizer and fed to servants and prisoners, and Massachusetts laws were reputedly passed limiting how often workers could be fed lobster. It was not until the development of commercial canning from the 1840s onward and later the railroad's ability to ship live lobster from the Northeast to inland markets that lobster achieved its luxury status. Tarragon (Artemisia dracunculus), a member of the wormwood family with a distinctive anise-like aroma, is one of the four classic fine herbes of French cuisine alongside chervil, chives, and parsley. French cooking has long considered tarragon the ideal aromatic companion for shellfish and white-fleshed fish, a pairing documented in 19th-century French cookbooks. Béarnaise sauce, one of the great sauces of classical French cooking, relies on tarragon as its defining herb. Drawn butter with herbs — the simpler American approach to serving lobster — combines the French concept of compound butter (softened butter worked with herbs, created in French classical kitchens since at least the 17th century) with the American preference for pure, clean flavors that allow the quality of the primary ingredient to speak for itself.