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Lobster Sauce
Take the coral from the back and neck of a freshly-boiled hen lobster. Put it in a mortar and pound it thoroughly with double the quantity of fresh butter, and a little cayenne, and press it through a hair-sieve with the back of a spoon. This is lobster butter. It ought to be of a bright red colour. As it will keep for some time, any that is left should be put into a jar and kept in a cool, dry place until it is again wanted, as lobsters with coral cannot always be obtained. Pick out the white meat, and tear it into flakes with two forks. A small quantity only will be required for the sauce, the rest may therefore be served up some other way (see LOBSTER SALAD, LOBSTER RISSOLES, LOBSTER CUTLETS, etc.). Break the shell of the lobster into small pieces. Pour three-quarters of a pint of water over these, and simmer gently until the liquid is reduced to half a pint. Mix two ounces of fresh butter with an ounce of flour. Strain the half-pint of gravy upon it, and stir all over the fire until the mixture thickens, but it must not boil. If despatch is necessary water may be used instead of the gravy. Stir into the sauce as much lobster butter (see recipe given above) as will colour it brightly, add about a table-spoonful of the white meat, and if liked, the juice of half a small lemon. Let it remain on the fire until the meat is quite hot. It must be remembered, however, that if it be allowed to boil the colour will be spoilt. A table-spoonful of cream is sometimes added. Time, two or three minutes to heat the sauce. Probable cost, small lobster, 1s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian fish-sauce built on two things: a quick stock from the broken shells and a coral butter that supplies both the colour and most of the flavour. The whole thing hangs on keeping it below a simmer once the coral goes in.
- Never let it boilCoral is roe, and boiling dulls its colour, exactly as the recipe warns. Hold the finished sauce below a simmer for the two or three minutes it takes to heat the flaked meat through.
- Imperial measuresThree-quarters of an imperial pint is 15 fl oz, or a scant 2 cups US; the half pint you reduce it to is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 cups. Two ounces of butter is half a stick, and an ounce of flour is a scant 1/4 cup.
- Finding coralOnly a female (hen) lobster carries roe, and it is black-green raw, turning scarlet on cooking. Cooked lobster sold over a counter may well be male or have had the coral removed, so ask a fishmonger to set one aside; a spoonful of tomato paste with a pinch of sweet paprika gives colour but not the same flavour.
- Mortar and hair-sieveA hair-sieve is simply a fine-mesh strainer. A small food processor does the pounding in seconds, but still push the paste through the mesh — the coral holds membrane that will read as grit otherwise.
- Storing the lobster butterIgnore "a cool, dry place." This is butter carrying cooked shellfish roe: refrigerate it and use within three or four days, or roll it in parchment and freeze it, where it keeps a couple of months and slices off as needed.
- Butter and flour, not a rouxRubbing cold butter into flour and pouring hot stock over it is the old beurre manié method. It thickens without the toasted flavour of a cooked roux, which is the point here — nothing should compete with the lobster. Whisk hard as the stock goes in.
- The shell stockCrack the shells small and dry-toast them briefly in the pan before adding water if you want more depth; twenty to thirty minutes at a gentle simmer is enough to reduce 2 cups to 1 1/4.
- Yield and servingEnough for five or six, as the original says -- roughly a cup and a half of sauce. Lobster sauce was a standard accompaniment to poached fish such as salmon, turbot or brill, and is still best on a plain white fish rather than anything sauced or spiced.
Lobster sauce belongs to the great Victorian family of fish sauces -- lobster, shrimp, oyster, anchovy -- that existed to dress the boiled and poached fish at the centre of a formal dinner, and the coral butter it teaches is a building block used elsewhere in the book, in the cutlets, rissoles and salads it cross-references. The trick of pounding coral with butter and forcing it through a sieve is generally traced to French practice, where beurre de homard was one of the standard compound butters. The instruction to save the leftovers fits the economics on the page: the recipe itself puts a small lobster at a shilling, and it says outright that lobsters with coral cannot always be obtained, so a jar in the larder carried the colour forward to the next dinner.