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Devilled Lobster
Mince the lobster meat, mix with sufficient cream sauce to moisten, season with salt, cayenne, onion juice, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, and a very little minced parsley; add the yolk of 1 or 2 hard-boiled eggs mashed or minced fine. Serve hot with thin crackers, or cold for sandwiches, canapes, or as a lunch dish on crisp leaves of lettuce.
A proportionless recipe of the kind common in turn-of-the-century compendiums: it assumes you have cooked lobster on hand and know what "devilled" should taste like. Work by taste and texture rather than measurement.
- Working quantitiesFor the meat of one 1 1/2 lb cooked lobster (roughly 6 oz picked meat), figure 1/3 to 1/2 cup cream sauce, no more. The mixture should hold together on a cracker, not run.
- Cream sauceThis is a plain white sauce: butter, flour and milk or cream cooked until it thickens and no longer tastes of raw flour. The recipe gives no proportions; roughly 1 tbsp each butter and flour to 1/2 cup liquid keeps it stiffer than a pouring sauce, since the lobster will release moisture.
- "Devilled" means the seasoningNothing is grilled or baked in this recipe; here devilled means sharply seasoned with mustard and cayenne, though the term also covered grilled devilled bones and kidneys in the same period. Dry English mustard gives the intended heat; a spoonful of prepared mustard works if you slacken the sauce accordingly.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion and press the pulp through a fine sieve, or grate on a microplane and use juice and pulp together. A teaspoon is plenty; it is there for sharpness, not onion flavour.
- Cayenne restraintThe recipe gives no amount, so add cayenne a pinch at a time and taste between additions.
- Serving it hotWarm the mixture gently in a saucepan over low heat or a double boiler, just until steaming. Cooked lobster stiffens and goes cottony if it is boiled again in the sauce.
- The egg yolkThe recipe calls for one or two mashed hard-boiled yolks in every version; they add richness and absorb moisture, and the larger amount gives the firmer, less sauced texture that suits cold service in sandwiches or on lettuce.
- YieldOne lobster's meat makes enough for four canape servings or two lunch plates. It is best eaten the day it is made; the sauce loosens overnight.