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Lobster and Oyster Pie
Pick the meat from the tails of two freshly-boiled lobsters, and cut it into neat pieces, which must be seasoned with a little pepper, salt, and pounded mace. Bruise the shells and spawn, and make a little gravy from them. Pound the flesh from the claws and bodies to a smooth paste, mix with it a slice of bread, finely grated, six ounces of fresh butter, three table-spoonfuls of vinegar, and a little pepper, salt, and nutmeg. Line the edges and sides of a pie-dish with good puff paste. Put in the slices of lobster, then two dozen oysters with their liquid and afterwards the pounded meat. Lay the cover over all, and bake in a moderate oven for an hour and a quarter. Before serving, strain a little of the gravy from the shells into the pie. When the pastry is cooked enough the pie is done. Probable cost of lobsters, 1s. 6d. each. Sufficient for eight or nine persons.
A Victorian raised-flavour pie in which the poor parts of the lobster do the heavy work: claws and body meat are pounded into a butter-rich forcemeat that binds the tail slices and oysters. A few things need translating.
- The hinge: pastry, not the clockThe instruction that matters is the last one — "when the pastry is cooked enough the pie is done." An hour and a quarter is far longer than the filling needs; the lobster is already boiled and the oysters take only minutes. Judge by a deep golden, crisp lid, which in a modern oven means roughly 30-40 minutes for a standard pie dish.
- Oven temperatureThe book says only "a moderate oven" and gives no figure; the usual modern reading of that term is around 350F/180C. Puff paste is generally better started hotter, around 400F/200C for the first 15 minutes to set the lift, then dropped to 350F to finish.
- Two boiled lobstersThe recipe gives no weight. Lobsters of roughly 1 to 1.5 lb would yield something in the region of 8-12 oz of picked meat between them, which suits these quantities; much larger lobsters would give more meat than the six ounces of butter in the paste can comfortably bind.
- Spawn and coralThe "spawn" is the roe of a hen lobster, black when raw and coral-red when cooked; it is what colours the gravy. Not every lobster has it, and it is absent from males. The pie works without it, but the shell gravy will be paler and thinner in flavour.
- Pounded mace and nutmegMace is the outer covering of the nutmeg seed, warmer and less sweet than the nutmeg itself. Ground mace from a jar is fine; use it sparingly, as a quarter teaspoon is plenty for this quantity.
- Six ounces of butterThat is 170g, and it is not a misprint — the pounded claw meat is essentially a potted-lobster paste, and the butter is the binder. It will look excessive going in and will be absorbed by the grated bread and the oyster liquor.
- The oysters and their liquorTwo dozen shucked oysters with their liquid. Because the pie bakes a good while, they will firm up considerably; using the largest oysters you can get, rather than small ones, gives a better result. Strain any grit out of the liquor before it goes in.
- The shell gravyThe recipe says only to bruise the shells and spawn and "make a little gravy from them"; simmering them in water or light stock and straining will do it. The gravy goes in before serving, after baking, as the recipe directs — added beforehand it would make the underside of the pastry sodden.
- Yield and costEight or nine as the original states, which is generous by modern appetites; six is more realistic as a main course. The 1s 6d per lobster is a note on relative Victorian prices and has no useful modern equivalent.
Cassell's belongs to the late-Victorian wave of large household dictionaries, and its shellfish pies reflect a period when lobster and oysters were both far cheaper and far more ordinary than they are now — oysters especially were a bulking ingredient in British kitchens well into the nineteenth century, put into steak pies and sauces as much for volume as for luxury. The technique here is older than the book: pounding the tougher claw and body meat with butter, breadcrumb and spice into a smooth paste is the same method that produced potted lobster and lobster butter, and it exists because nothing edible was thrown away. The vinegar and mace pairing is a survival of an older English seasoning habit for fish, generally traced to the medieval and Tudor taste for sharp, spiced sauces with seafood, which persisted in shellfish cookery long after it had faded from meat dishes.