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Broiled Lobster
Only live lobsters are cooked in this way. Kill the fish by inserting a sharp knife in its back between the body and tail shells, severing the spinal cord. Split the shell the entire length of the back, remove the stomach and intestinal canal, crack the large claws, and lay the fish as flat as possible. Brush the meat with melted butter, season with salt and pepper, place in a broiler, and with the flesh side down, broil slowly until a delicate brown, twenty minutes usually sufficing.
Turn the broiler, and broil for ten minutes longer. By covering the broiler with an inverted roasting pan the heat will be more concentrated. Serve hot, passing melted butter with the lobster.
A straightforward split-and-broil, but the 30-minute total belongs to a hinged wire broiler set over a coal fire, not a modern gas or electric broiler. Cut the time hard or you will get lobster the texture of an eraser.
- Timing is the hingeA 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb split lobster needs roughly 8-12 minutes total under a modern broiler, flesh side up for most of it. The original's twenty-plus-ten assumes radiant heat from below at a distance; the meat is done when it turns opaque white and the shell is bright red.
- "A broiler" is a hinged wire basketAt the time this meant a two-sided wire clamp you held or set over the coals, which is why the recipe says to turn the broiler rather than the lobster. With an overhead broiler, place the halves cut side up on a sheet pan about 4-5 inches from the element and do not flip.
- The inverted roasting panThis was a way of trapping radiant heat over an open fire. It does nothing useful in a closed oven broiler and will block the heat source entirely; skip it.
- Killing the lobsterThe knife through the head, not the back, is the accepted method now: drive the point down through the shell just behind the eyes, then split forward. The recipe's "between the body and tail shells" severs a nerve cord but is slower. Chilling the lobster 15-20 minutes in the freezer first to sedate it is a commonly suggested alternative.
- What to remove and what to keepThe "stomach" is the sac behind the eyes and the "intestinal canal" is the dark vein down the tail; both go. The green tomalley and any coral-red roe are traditionally left in and eaten, though tomalley accumulates contaminants and advisories suggest limiting it.
- Butter and seasoningBrush again partway through, since the first coat runs off into the shell. Salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon at the table is the whole seasoning the dish wants.
- YieldHalf a lobster per person as an appetizer, a whole 1 1/4 lb lobster as a main course. Allow about 2 tablespoons melted butter per person for passing.
Broiling is often said to have been the prestige treatment for lobster in turn-of-the-century American cookery, ranked above boiling because it required a live fish and a cook confident enough to split one. New England lobster had traveled a long way by the end of the nineteenth century: abundant enough in the early nineteenth century to be fed to servants and used as bait, it became a fashionable hotel and shore-dinner item once rail transport and lobster pounds made live shipping possible. The flat instruction that "only live lobsters are cooked in this way" seems to reflect a market distinction of the period, when previously boiled lobster and canned lobster meat were both widely sold and were generally reserved for salads, croquettes and Newburg. The hinged wire broiler assumed here was a familiar piece of equipment for coal ranges and open grates, and the trick of inverting a roasting pan over it to concentrate heat is the sort of improvisation that disappears from cookbooks as soon as enclosed gas broilers arrive.