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Devilled Lobster
Ingredients.
The Tail of one or more Lobsters.
Seven Croûtons of fried Bread.
Two tablespoonfuls of Chutney.
Two chopped pickled Gherkins.
One tablespoonful of Worcester Sauce.
Cayenne. Salt. Two ounces of Butter.
Cut from the tail of the lobster seven nice slices; these should be as nearly the same size as possible. Mix the chutney, gherkins, salt, cayenne, and Worcester sauce on a plate, and cover each piece of lobster with the mixture. Make the butter hot in a frying-pan, put in the pieces of lobster, and warm thoroughly.
Have the croûtons hot and crisp, and place one piece of lobster on each. If any of the chutney mixture remains, put a little on each piece of lobster. Serve very hot.
A late-Victorian savoury built on cooked lobster: the tail is sliced, coated in a hot chutney paste and warmed through in butter. Everything hinges on not cooking the lobster a second time.
- Start with cooked lobster"Warm thoroughly" implies a lobster already boiled in the ordinary way. Buy or cook a whole lobster and use the tail meat; the claws and body can go to another dish.
- The hinge: warm, do not fry"Warm thoroughly" means about a minute a side over moderate heat, just until the butter is bubbling and the slices are hot through. Lobster that is genuinely cooked twice turns fibrous and squeaky, and no amount of chutney hides it.
- How much lobsterSeven even slices from a single tail implies a fairly large lobster; a small one will give only four or five, which is presumably why the recipe allows "one or more". Cut on a slight diagonal to widen the pieces.
- Butter and panTwo ounces is 4 tablespoons, generous for seven slices, and it should foam rather than brown. Use a wide pan so the pieces sit in a single layer and the coating stays on them.
- ChutneyMost likely a sweet fruit chutney of the mango type, though the recipe specifies nothing. Chop any large pieces of fruit so the mixture spreads; if it is very loose, drain a little syrup off or the coating slides into the butter.
- Cayenne"Devilled" conventionally implies assertive heat, and the recipe leaves the quantity to the cook. Start with a scant quarter teaspoon in the mixture and taste the paste before it goes on the lobster, since the chutney's sugar mutes it.
- CroûtonsNot the salad cubes. Cut bread slightly larger than the lobster slices, fry in butter or clarified butter until crisp, and drain on paper. Fry them first and keep them warm and uncovered, or they soften.
- Yield and servingSeven pieces is a savoury course or a light first course for three or four. Plate and eat immediately; the crispness is the point and it lasts a couple of minutes.
"Devilled" was English kitchen shorthand from the late eighteenth century onward for anything treated with mustard, cayenne, pepper and sharp bottled sauces, often reheated meat or fish and frequently served late at night or at breakfast. By the later nineteenth century such hot, pungent morsels had become closely associated with the savoury course, the small hot bite that closed a formal dinner after the sweets, which may explain why the quantity here is seven neat mouthfuls on fried bread rather than a plateful. The chutney and the cayenne were enough to make a dish read as Indian to a British household, and bottled Worcestershire sauce -- sold commercially by Lea & Perrins from the late 1830s, its Anglo-Indian origin story traditional rather than documented -- sat comfortably alongside them. Lobster in this period was expensive but not extraordinary in a good household, and a cold cooked tail was the sort of thing a cook might be expected to turn into something hot and pungent at short notice.