Home › The Principles of Cookery › Lobster Cutlets, Quickly Made
Lobster Cutlets, Quickly Made
Choose a very large lobster. Let it be half boiled; take the flesh out whole, cut it into slices a quarter of an inch thick, and dip these into beaten egg and then into highly-seasoned bread-crumbs. Let them stand ten minutes, then dip them again, and fry them in hot butter till they are lightly browned all over. Drain them from the fat, and arrange them in a circle on a hot dish, pour a quarter of a pint of lobster sauce into the centre, and send to table as hot as possible. Hot pickles should accompany this dish. The sauce should be made in the ordinary way. Time, eight minutes to fry. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A quick supper dish built on the fiction that lobster meat can be sliced like a cutlet, which it can if the tail is left whole and only partly cooked. Two details carry the recipe: the half-boiling, and the double coating.
- "Half boiled"The lobster goes into the pot only long enough to set the flesh so it can be lifted out in one piece and sliced cleanly he size of that animal is roughly half the usual time about 6-7 minutes for a 2 lb lobster. The slices finish cooking in the pan, so they should be firm and opaque by the time the crumbs are brown.
- A very large lobsterLarge lobsters were more readily had than they are now; today a 1.5-2 lb lobster is the norm and one tail will not yield enough quarter-inch rounds for six. Reckon on one 2 lb lobster for two people, or use two smaller ones and accept smaller cutlets.
- Quarter of a pintAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, a scant two-thirds of a US cup enough to pool in the centre of the dish rather than to sauce each slice.
- Lobster sauce "in the ordinary way"Lobster sauce 'in the ordinary way' -- typically a béchamel or fish velouté enriched with the pounded coral and creamy parts of the head, often with a little anchovy or cayenne. Make it before you fry, since the cutlets will not wait.
- Double coatingThe ten-minute rest between the two coats lets the first layer set and grip, which helps the crumbs stay put on wet shellfish. Season the crumbs hard -- cayenne, mace, lemon zest, salt -- as the recipe's own 'highly-seasoned bread-crumbs' directs.
- Frying in butterWhole butter held long enough to brown crumbs will darken and burn. Use clarified butter or ghee, or butter cut with a neutral oil, over a moderate heat.
- Eight minutesProbably the working time at the pan rather than per side; quarter-inch slices need only a couple of minutes a face, and longer makes the meat squeak and shred.
- Hot picklesThat is, pungent ones: Indian-style mixed pickle, piccalilli or similar. Any sharp, mustardy pickle does the same work of cutting the fried butter.
Cutlets of this kind belong to the late-Victorian fashion for making one food impersonate another, and here a chop-shaped slice of lobster is arranged in a ring on a hot dish. Cassell's carries other lobster cutlet recipes in which the meat is pounded and bound into a forcemeat and re-formed into cutlet shapes; this one is flagged 'quickly made' because it skips that labour and simply slices the tail. Lobster was plentiful enough in the nineteenth century to be a staple of hotel and club cookery, and the price given here reflects a market where the shellfish, not the labour, was the expense.