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Buttered Lobster
2 lb. lobster 3 tablespoons butter Salt and pepper Lemon juice Remove lobster meat from shell and chop slightly. Melt butter, add lobster, and when heated, season and serve garnished with lobster claws.
A three-ingredient dish that depends entirely on restraint: the lobster is already cooked, and the butter is only there to warm and coat it.
- The lobster is presumed cookedThe method begins by removing the meat from the shell, so the lobster must already have been boiled and cooled enough to shell. Start with the picked meat of a 2 lb lobster.
- Heat, do not cookThis is the hinge. Lobster that is already cooked needs only a minute or two in warm butter; hold the pan below a simmer. Once the butter breaks into a hard sizzle the meat tightens and turns cottony.
- Butter quantityThree tablespoons is roughly 45 g, generous for the half-pound or so of meat a 2 lb lobster gives. Keep it as a sauce rather than a frying medium and spoon the pan butter over the meat at the table.
- "Chop slightly"Means large irregular pieces, not a dice. Split the tail into thick medallions and leave the knuckle and claw meat whole where you can.
- Lemon juiceNo quantity is given; a teaspoon or two is enough for this amount. Adding it off the heat keeps the butter looking clean.
- The garnishThe recipe says only 'garnished with lobster claws'; this may mean the claws left whole for looks or the claw meat itself. If you want the shells on the plate, crack them carefully at the joint so the halves stay presentable.
- YieldA 2 lb lobster gives about 8 oz of picked meat. That is one substantial portion or two small ones as a first course.
Buttered lobster belongs to a family of "buttered" dishes -- buttered crab, buttered eggs, buttered shrimps -- in which a cooked ingredient is folded through melted butter and seasoned, with nothing thickened and nothing browned. The style is older than the book: English cookery had buttered shellfish by the seventeenth century, when butter was a common enrichment before flour-based sauces became routine. It is the plain option, the way to serve good lobster when the point is the lobster.