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Lobster, Buttered
Pick the meat from a large freshly-boiled cock lobster. Mince it finely, and put it into a stewpan with an ounce and a half of fresh butter rolled in flour. Stir it over a gentle fire until quite hot, then add the eighth of a nutmeg, grated, a dessert-spoonful of chilli vinegar, or, if this is not at hand, common vinegar may be used, and three grains of cayenne, with half a salt-spoonful of white pepper in it. Two table-spoonfuls of rich gravy are a great improvement to this dish. Stir the mixture gently over the fire until it is quite hot. Serve it in the shell of the lobster with bread-crumbs over the meat. Time to simmer, ten minutes. Probable cost, from 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A short reheating dish rather than a cooked-from-raw one, and the whole risk lies in overdoing already-cooked meat. Read the timing note first.
- The ten minutes is the trapThe lobster is already boiled; all that is needed is to warm it through and thicken the butter, which takes two to three minutes over low heat. A full ten minutes of simmering turns picked lobster meat stringy and squeaky.
- Cock lobsterThe male. Victorian cooks associated the cock with firmer tail meat and the hen with coral, which is the likely reason for the specification. A hen lobster works perfectly well, and her coral can be pounded into the butter for flavour and a pink tint. A 1 1/2 to 2 lb lobster gives roughly the meat this quantity assumes, though it is spread thin over six or seven servings.
- Butter rolled in flourBeurre mania: about 1 1/2 oz (3 tablespoons) softened butter kneaded with a rounded tablespoon of flour. Added to hot moisture it thickens without lumping, which is why the flour is never cooked out first.
- Grains and spoonfulsA grain is an apothecary's weight of about 65 mg, so three grains of cayenne is a small pinch. A salt-spoonful is roughly 1/4 teaspoon, and a dessert-spoonful is 2 teaspoons. An eighth of a nutmeg is a couple of light scrapes on a fine grater.
- Chilli vinegarA Victorian storecupboard condiment made by steeping dried red chillies in vinegar for a few weeks. Sherry vinegar with a drop of hot sauce, or plain vinegar as the recipe itself allows ('common vinegar'), stands in for it.
- Rich gravyNot gravy in the roast-dinner sense but a reduced, gelatinous stock – veal or chicken glace, or reduced shellfish stock made from the shells. Two tablespoons is enough to give the butter body without loosening it.
- Serving in the shellSplit and clean the carapace and tail shell, fill, scatter with dry breadcrumbs, and give it a minute or two under a hot grill to colour the crumbs. Longer than that and you are cooking the lobster a second time.
- YieldSix or seven Victorian portions means one lobster spread thin as part of a long supper. As a modern first course it serves three or four.
Buttered lobster belongs to a family of English "buttered" shellfish dishes crab, buttered shrimps, buttered oysters – that run back through the eighteenth century, in which picked meat is bound with butter, seasoned sharply, and returned to its own shell to be served. Cassell's, compiled for late-Victorian middle-class households, quotes a probable cost of 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d., and the dish's usefulness was that a single lobster could be made to stretch across a table. The insistence on a cock lobster reflects a distinction Victorian cooks and fishmongers took seriously, the male prized for firm white flesh and the hen for her coral and spawn; the chilli vinegar is of its moment too, one of the many bottled steeped vinegars that stood in for fresh chillies in a British kitchen.