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Salt and Cayenne (Remove the flesh from the tail)
Remove the flesh from the tail and claws and Take the coral, wash and dry ounce of butter and rub it cut it up into dice. it, pound it with one through a hair-sieve. Put into a stewpan one ounce of butter and the flour. Mix these over the fire and add half a pint of water, stir well, and boil the sauce a few minutes. Then add the coral, butter, the pieces of lobster, the seasoning, and the cream. Mix and warm thoroughly, and the sauce is ready.
This is a classic lobster butter sauce: coral pounded with butter enriches a plain flour-and-water roux, with diced lobster meat folded in at the end. The proportions given are for the sauce base only.
- The hinge: never boil after the coral goes inOnce the coral butter and cream are added, keep the pan below a simmer. Boiling curdles the cream and turns the coral grainy and dull brown instead of a clear rose-pink.
- CoralThe dark green roe of a hen lobster, which turns coral-red when cooked. It is the sole colouring and much of the flavour here. Modern lobsters are often sold cooked and may have little or none; if there is no coral, expect a pale sauce and consider a spoonful of tomato puree for colour, or accept it as a white lobster sauce.
- Pounding and sievingA mortar and a hair sieve are called for; a small food processor followed by a fine-mesh strainer does the same work. The point is to leave no gritty specks of roe, so push the paste through with the back of a ladle.
- QuantitiesHalf a pint in a British book of this period is 10 fl oz (about 300 ml). The flour is not given a weight: one ounce of butter wants roughly one ounce (a scant 1/4 cup) of flour for a sauce of coating consistency. The cream and seasoning amounts are likewise left to the cook; start with 2-3 tablespoons of cream.
- Water, not stockSimmering the shells and small legs in the water for 15-20 minutes first, then straining, costs nothing and gives the sauce the body the plain water version lacks.
- SeasoningSalt and cayenne only, sharpened by a squeeze of lemon if the sauce tastes flat. Cayenne is the usual seasoning with lobster; in the small quantity used it lifts the sweetness without tinting the sauce as heavily as paprika would.
- Yield and servingAbout 1 1/2 cups, enough for four portions of poached salmon, turbot or halibut. Make it shortly before serving; reheating a cream-and-butter sauce with lobster meat in it toughens the meat.
Lobster sauce of this kind was a standard accompaniment to boiled or poached fish in British cookery, which rarely sent plain fish to table unsauced. The technique of working coral into butter and sieving it to a smooth paste before stirring it into a finished sauce is shared with the French repertoire of compound butters, the beurre de homard. The recipe is thrifty in its own way, since the roe that a household cook might discard is what carries much of the flavour and the colour.