Home › The Principles of Cookery › Lobster, Boiled
Lobster, Boiled
Wash the lobster well before boiling, especially if it be a hen, tie the claws securely, and throw the lobster, head first, into plenty of fast-boiling salt and water. If this be done life will be destroyed instantly. Afterwards let the fish boil gently. When done enough, take it out, wipe it, and rub the shell with a little salad-oil, which will give it a clear red colour. Care should be taken not to boil a lobster too long, or the meat will be stringy. The Germans put a handful of caraway-seeds into the salt and water. If not sufficiently boiled, the spawn will not be brightly coloured. Time, moderate-sized lobster, fifteen to twenty minutes; large lobster, thirty to forty minutes; very large, one hour. Probable cost, from 1s. 6d. to 3s.
The method is sound; the timings are not. Cassell's numbers will give you stringy, chalky meat, which is the very fault the entry warns against.
- Timing, correctedA 1 to 1 1/4 lb lobster needs about 8-10 minutes at a bare simmer from the moment the water returns to the boil; 1 1/2 lb about 11-12 minutes; a 2 lb lobster 15 minutes or so. The book's "thirty to forty minutes" for a large lobster, and an hour for a very large one, belong to a period that liked seafood cooked to the point of collapse.
- DonenessTail meat should read 135-140F at the thickest point. The old test was to pull an antenna or a small walking leg: if it comes away easily the lobster is done. Shell colour alone tells you nothing beyond that heat reached the surface.
- Killing the lobsterPlunging live into fast-boiling water is still the commonest commercial practice, but the humane standard now is to chill the lobster 20-30 minutes in the freezer until it is torpid, then either boil it or split the head lengthwise through the cross mark behind the eyes with a heavy knife. Switzerland and New Zealand, among others, prohibit boiling live crustaceans without prior stunning.
- "A hen"A female lobster, carrying the dark green roe that turns coral red on cooking — the "spawn" mentioned at the end. The book does not say why a hen needs extra washing; presumably because the roe sits under the tail among the swimmerets. The green tomalley in the body is the hepatopancreas, serving as liver and pancreas; edible, though current advisories warn against eating much of it because it concentrates contaminants.
- Salt and waterSalt the water hard — roughly 1/3 cup of coarse salt per gallon. Underseasoned water is generally held to leach flavour out of the meat rather than into it.
- Salad-oilAny bland oil: in later Victorian Britain "salad oil" usually meant olive oil, or a refined seed oil sold for dressing salads. Rubbing the cooked shell is purely cosmetic, for gloss on a cold buffet lobster.
- CarawayThe German touch is genuine and worth trying — a small handful in the water gives a faint aromatic edge. Dill, bay or a split lemon do the same job for most palates.
- Tying the clawsRubber bands from the fishmonger serve the purpose. Tying keeps the claws from pinching and from breaking off and leaking meat into the pot.
- Cost and yield1s. 6d. to 3s. was a real expense for a middle-class table but not extravagant. Reckon one 1 1/4 lb lobster per person as a main course, or two split between three as a starter.
Boiled lobster was assumed knowledge in a late-Victorian kitchen — the starting point for salads, cutlets, patties, sauces and the ubiquitous lobster butter. British lobsters travelled alive by rail to city fishmongers, which is why the book assumes a live animal rather than a cooked one. The detail about the shell colour is real chemistry, though not understood as such at the time: the blue-grey pigment in the shell is astaxanthin bound to a protein, and heat releases it to show its natural red. The caraway note reflects a genuine northern German and Baltic habit of seasoning the boiling liquor with caraway or dill, and is one of a scattering of continental asides that run through the Dictionary.