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Lobster, Stewed
Pick the meat carefully from a medium-sized freshly-boiled lobster, cut it into dice, and put them in an enamelled stewpan, with half a salt-spoonful of salt, half a salt-spoonful of pepper, half a grain of cayenne, two ounces of fresh butter, a tea-spoonful of mustard, and a dessert-spoonful of vinegar. Stew gently for five or six minutes, then add a glassful of light wine, simmer two or three minutes longer, and serve. Garnish the dish with parsley and sliced lemon. Probable cost of lobster, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A short buttered-and-devilled stew built on lobster that is already cooked, so the only real risk is overcooking it. Everything below the hinge is seasoning arithmetic.
- The hinge: the meat is already cookedA freshly boiled lobster needs only to be warmed through in the seasoned butter. Two to three minutes over low heat is enough; the full five or six of the original will turn the tail woolly and squeeze water out of the claw meat.
- Salt-spoonfuls and grainsA salt-spoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon, so read the salt and pepper as a scant 1/4 teaspoon each. A grain is an apothecary's weight of about 65 mg, so half a grain of cayenne is a pinch measured with two fingers, not a spoon.
- A glassful of light wineA Victorian wineglassful is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so take this as roughly 2 to 3 fl oz. "Light wine" means an unfortified table wine rather than sherry or madeira; a dry white is the likeliest reading. Keep it barely simmering, as the recipe directs, or the butter will split.
- The mustardA teaspoonful of mustard in an English book of this date is most likely mustard powder, which is sharper and drier than a modern jarred mustard. If you use prepared English mustard, the same volume gives a milder result; Dijon changes the character but works.
- Enamelled stewpanEnamel, stainless or a nonstick pan will not react with the vinegar and wine; bare aluminium or unlined copper can give an acidic sauce a metallic edge.
- Butter and emulsionTwo ounces is 4 tablespoons for one medium lobster, which is deliberately rich. Keep the pan below a simmer and swirl rather than stir so the butter, vinegar and wine hold together as a loose sauce.
- YieldA medium lobster of about 1 1/2 lb yields 6 to 8 oz of picked meat. "Four or five persons" assumes this is one dish among several at a Victorian table; as a modern main course it serves two, or four on toast or in pastry cases as a first course.
At 1s 6d, a lobster was a modest rather than a trifling purchase; lobsters were landed along the Scottish and Norfolk coasts and moved inland by rail. The dish belongs to a long English line of "buttered lobster" preparations found in eighteenth-century receipt books, where picked meat was reheated in butter with a little vinegar or wine. The mustard and cayenne mark it as a mild relative of the devilled dishes Victorian cooks applied to cooked flesh. The garnish of parsley and sliced lemon is a standard fish-course dressing of the period.