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Lobster Fricassee
Pick the meat from the tail and claws of a medium-sized lobster, cut it into small squares, and put these in a saucepan with half a pint of good white sauce, pound the coral, and mix it smoothly with the liquid. Season with half a salt-spoonful of salt and half a salt-spoonful of white pepper and pounded mace mixed. When the mixture is on the point of boiling take it from the fire, let it cool a moment, then add a tablespoonful of strained lemon-juice. The white sauce may be made of a quarter of a pint of good beef stock and a quarter of a pint of cream, thickened with a little arrowroot; or, if no beef stock is at hand, the shell of the lobster may be boiled in half a pint of water and cream, flavouring and thickening being added to it. Time, about ten minutes to bring the sauce to the boiling point. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A Victorian ragout of cooked lobster in a lightly bound cream sauce. The whole thing hinges on heat control: once the sauce reaches the point of boiling it comes off the fire, and the lemon juice goes in only after that.
- Start with a cooked lobsterThe recipe takes for granted that the lobster has already been boiled and cooled — that is why the meat can simply be picked out and squared up. A 1 1/2 to 2 lb cooked lobster gives roughly 6-8 oz of picked meat.
- Half a pintImperial measure, so 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. The two quarter-pints of stock and cream are 5 fl oz each.
- Salt-spoonfulThe salt spoon was the smallest of the Victorian table spoons, roughly 1/4 teaspoon. Half of one is a pinch — about 1/8 teaspoon each of salt and of the pepper-and-mace mixture.
- CoralThe dark green roe found only in hen lobsters, turning coral-red on cooking. Supermarket lobster is often male or already picked, so expect to make the dish without it; the sauce loses colour and a little depth but nothing else. Pound it to a paste before whisking in, or it will stay in grains.
- Do not let it boilCream sauce plus a tablespoon of lemon juice curdles if it goes over. The instruction to take it from the fire, cool a moment, then acidify is the whole technique, and the lobster toughens above a simmer besides.
- ArrowrootStill sold, and still the right choice here — it thickens clear and at a lower temperature than flour, which suits a sauce that must never boil. Use about 2 teaspoons slaked in cold liquid for half a pint. It thins if held hot for long, so serve promptly.
- The shell stock alternativeThe recipe offers simmering the broken shell in water and cream only as a fallback when no beef stock is at hand, and it would need rather longer than the ten minutes quoted for bringing the finished sauce to the boil. Strain it well; shell fragments are sharp.
- Yield"Four or five persons" assumes a place in a long multi-course dinner. As a main course with rice or toast it serves two, generously three.
- Pounded maceThe lacy outer coat of nutmeg, warmer and less sweet. Ground mace from a jar is fine; ground nutmeg, used sparingly, can stand in.
Fricassee in English cookery books of this period means a white ragout — meat or fish already cooked, or gently cooked, then finished in a pale sauce rather than browned — and by the later nineteenth century the word had been stretched well beyond the chicken and veal it originally described. Cassell's was a household dictionary aimed at middle-class kitchens with servants, and lobster sat in an awkward place in that market: expensive at 2s. 6d. for the dish, but increasingly available inland once the railways moved fish quickly to market. Recipes like this one, which stretch a single medium lobster across four or five plates with stock, cream and a thickening, are the practical result. The two versions of the sauce say a good deal about how such books were used: one for the household with a stockpot always going, one for the household without.