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Fried Lobster with Horseradish Sauce
1 boiled lobster Crisco for frying 1 egg Breadcrumbs 1 cupful thick cream Salt and paprika to taste 2 tablespoonfuls grated horseradish Cut lobster meat into neat pieces, dip in beaten egg, toss in breadcrumbs and fry in hot Crisco to brown well. Whip up cream, season it well with salt and paprika and stir in horseradish; heap this sauce in the center of the serving dish and arrange the pieces of fried lobster round it. Serve hot.
A quick supper dish built on an already-cooked lobster, so the frying is only about colour and crispness. The sauce is unsweetened whipped cream sharpened with horseradish, which will collapse if it sits.
- The hinge: the lobster is already cookedEverything in the pan is finished meat. Fry only until the crumbs are golden, roughly one to two minutes, and lift it out. Longer and the lobster tightens and turns cottony.
- CriscoAn all-vegetable hydrogenated shortening, and the reason this recipe exists — the book was published to promote it. Any neutral frying fat works; keep it at 350-375F so the crumbs brown before the meat overheats.
- Coating that stays onLobster meat is wet and the egg slides off it. Pat the pieces dry and dust them with flour before the egg and crumbs, and the coating will survive the pan.
- "Whip up cream"This means whipped, not merely stirred. Use heavy cream at 36% fat or above, whip to soft peaks, then fold in the horseradish — beating after the horseradish goes in tends to break the cream.
- Grated horseradishThis most likely means fresh root, grated, though bottled prepared horseradish was already on the market by this date. Jarred prepared horseradish is packed in vinegar and brine; drain it well and start with less, or the acid will thin the cream.
- PaprikaIn this period paprika would most likely have been sweet paprika, used as much for colour against the white cream as for heat. Smoked paprika, little used in English-language kitchens at the time, will taste wrong here.
- YieldA single boiled lobster gives only a few ounces of picked meat, not a pound or more. Scale the sauce to the lobster you actually have.
- Timing the plateWhip the cream last and assemble immediately. Horseradish cream slackens as it stands, and hot lobster set against it will slacken it faster.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre that flourished in the early twentieth century: the cookbook issued by a manufacturer to teach cooks what to do with a new product. Crisco appeared in 1911 as a hydrogenated cottonseed shortening, and books like this one — written by Marion Harris Neil, a prolific professional cookery writer — were the vehicle for persuading households to fry and bake in it rather than in lard or butter. The dish itself is a familiar type: cold cooked shellfish crumbed and refried, plated around a mound of sauce rather than under it. The horseradish cream draws on the northern European habit of serving grated horseradish with cold meat and fish; whipping it into cream rather than mixing it with vinegar softens the bite enough to sit beside lobster without overwhelming it.