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Lobster Cutlets
Cut the meat from a moderate-sized hen lobster into small dice. Beat half an ounce of butter and an ounce of flour over the fire till smooth, then add a gill of water, boil, and stir in a table-spoonful of cream, six drops of lemon-juice, salt, pepper, and cayenne, with lobster butter (see LOBSTER BUTTER) to redden the whole, and the lobster meat. Stir the mixture over the fire, pour it on a plate till cold, then flour lightly and form into cutlets about a third of an inch thick and three inches long, stick a little piece of one of the small claws into each, dip each into beaten egg, and roll it in bread-crumbs. Let the cutlets stand a few minutes, then dip them in egg and bread-crumbs a second time. Fry them in hot fat until they are lightly coloured, and place each cutlet as it is finished on a piece of blotting-paper before the fire. Arrange in a circle on a hot dish, and garnish with parsley. Time, two or three minutes to fry. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A classic croquette mixture shaped to imitate a veal cutlet, complete with a claw tip standing in for the bone. The whole thing hinges on a panada stiff enough to hold a shape when cold.
- A gillIn a British book of this date a gill is a quarter of a pint, about 5 fl oz or 150 ml. With half an ounce of butter and a full ounce of flour that gives a very thick binding paste, which is the point.
- Hen lobsterSpecified for the coral (the roe), which turns scarlet when cooked and was the colouring agent of choice. A cock lobster or a supermarket cooked lobster works for the meat; a 1 to 1.5 lb lobster yields roughly 6 oz of picked meat.
- Lobster butterButter pounded with the coral and shell debris, then strained. If you have no coral, a spoonful of tomato paste or a pinch of sweet paprika beaten into soft butter gives the same warm pink without tasting of anything much.
- Chill the mixture properly"Pour it on a plate till cold" means spread it thin, no more than an inch, and refrigerate until firm, an hour at least. A warm or soft panada will burst its crumb coat in the fat.
- The double coatingEgg and crumb twice, with a rest between, as the recipe directs. A single coat on a soft seafood filling is more likely to split. Chill the coated cutlets again before frying.
- FryingHot fat here means 350-375F (175-190C). The filling is already cooked, so two or three minutes is genuinely all they need; longer and the crumb darkens past "lightly coloured".
- Blotting-paperVictorian kitchen paper. Use paper towels, and keep the drained cutlets in a low oven, around 250F, rather than propped before a fire.
- YieldSix to eight as a first course or savoury, giving one or two small cutlets each. As a main course the same quantity feeds three or four.
Cassell's places this among the made dishes that let a small quantity of expensive shellfish stretch across a table: a few ounces of lobster, bound in a flour-and-butter panada, becomes eight portions with the visual dignity of a plate of cutlets. The trompe-l'oeil is deliberate. Nineteenth-century service prized dishes that looked like something they were not, and the little claw tip pushed into each croquette to mimic a rib bone is the same conceit that gave us cutlet frills on chicken and mock turtle soup. Lobster was seasonal and awkward to transport inland, so recipes that made a single hen lobster serve a dinner party were practical as well as decorative. The insistence on a hen for her coral reflects a period habit of colouring food by natural means, the same instinct that produced spinach greening and cochineal.