Home › Oysters and Shellfish › Lobster Sauce (Cupful finely minced lobster)
Lobster Sauce (Cupful finely minced lobster)
1/2 cupful finely minced lobster meat and the coral; 1 cupful drawn butter sauce; 1/2 tablespoonful butter; juice of half a lemon; a dash of paprika. Rub the coral of the lobster to a paste with the butter, add the minced lobster, lemon juice, and paprika. Mix with the hot drawn butter sauce. Let it boil up, and serve with the fish.
A short finishing sauce for poached or baked fish, built on the Victorian standby of drawn butter. Everything depends on that base sauce, which the book assumes you already know.
- Drawn butter sauceNot simply melted butter, despite the name: it is a light white sauce made by cooking about 1 1/2 tablespoons flour in 2 tablespoons butter, whisking in a cup of hot water or fish stock, and simmering until smooth and lightly thickened, with salt to taste. Have it hot and ready before you start on the lobster.
- CoralThe coral is the roe of a female lobster, black-green when raw and coral-red once cooked. Fishmongers rarely sell it separately now; if your lobster has none, a teaspoon of tomato paste creamed into the butter gives similar colour, though not the same flavour.
- Rub to a pasteWork the cooked coral and the half tablespoon of butter together with the back of a spoon or through a fine sieve until no grains remain. Lumps of unbroken coral will not dissolve into the sauce and read as grit.
- "Let it boil up"This means bring it just to the point of bubbling and take it off, no more. The lobster meat is already cooked, and holding it at a boil turns it stringy in a couple of minutes.
- Lemon lastLemon -- the recipe adds the lemon juice to the coral and butter before the hot sauce goes in. If you prefer, add the acid off direct heat: a flour-thickened butter sauce can thin somewhat once acid is added and boiled hard.
- PaprikaThe paprika available in an American kitchen of this period was generally the sweet Hungarian sort, used as much for colour as for heat. Modern smoked paprika will dominate the lobster; use plain sweet.
- YieldAbout a cup and a half of sauce by the recipe's own measures, enough to dress fish for four to six. Better made while the fish rests than reheated.