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Lobster Thackeray
Two or three lobsters cut into squares, the fat (or green part) of one or two, one saltspoon of salt, three dashes of red pepper, one tablespoon of walnut catsup; one-fourth pound of butter, one scant spoon of paprika. This can be made in a chafing-dish.-Mrs Samuel Adler.
A chafing-dish recipe of the sort written for cooks who already knew the basics: no liquid, no timing, no yield. What it amounts to is lobster meat warmed through in a great deal of seasoned butter, and the only real skill is stopping early.
- Start with cooked lobsterThe recipe assumes boiled lobster picked from the shell, as any chafing-dish dish would. Two or three lobsters yield something under a pound of picked meat; the recipe states no yield.
- The hinge: barely heat itAlready-cooked lobster needs only two or three minutes in the hot butter to warm through. Held over the flame while the butter reduces, it turns fibrous and squeaky, which is the usual fate of chafing-dish shellfish.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. The "scant spoon" of paprika is probably a teaspoon rather than a tablespoon, since the catsup measure is spelled out as a tablespoon in full.
- Walnut catsupA thin, dark, salty condiment of green walnuts, vinegar, anchovy and spice, sold commercially into the twentieth century and now rare outside specialist shops. Mushroom ketchup is the closest survivor; Worcestershire sauce, in a slightly smaller quantity, gives the same salt-and-umami lift.
- Red pepper and paprika"Red pepper" here is cayenne, and three dashes in a dish this size is assertive. Paprika of this period was generally mild; sweet Hungarian paprika is the right choice, not smoked.
- The fat, or green partThis is the tomalley, the lobster's hepatopancreas, prized as a flavouring and stirred into the butter as a thickener. Note that public health agencies now advise against eating tomalley, since it concentrates biotoxins and contaminants from the animal's environment; the dish works without it, with a little more butter and seasoning.
- A quarter pound of butterOne stick of butter for a pound of meat makes a sauce, not a coating. Melt it gently, work in the seasonings, then add the lobster; if it looks alarmingly rich, a spoonful of cream or sherry loosens it without changing the character.
- ServingChafing-dish lobster was spooned over toast points or into pastry shells, and served at supper or after the theatre rather than at dinner.
Thackeray's name attached itself to this dish by way of culinary flattery, the novelist having a well-earned reputation as a diner and a writer about dining, rather than through anything documented in his kitchen. The recipe's real context is the chafing-dish vogue that ran from the 1890s into the 1910s, when a spirit lamp and a shallow pan let a hostess cook at the table without servants, and lobster, oysters and Welsh rarebit became the standard repertoire. Collections of such recipes gathered them from readers under their own names, which is why this one arrives as a list of quantities from Mrs Samuel Adler with no method at all: the assumption was that anyone who owned a chafing dish already knew what to do with it.