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Deviled Lobster
Deviled lobster is made the same as Deviled Crabs, using two cups of boiled lobster cut fine, instead of the dozen crabs. Serve in the lobster shells. This will require two small lobsters.
This is a variation entry that depends entirely on the Deviled Crabs recipe elsewhere in the book: a thick seasoned binder (butter, flour, milk or cream, mustard, cayenne, sometimes egg and crumbs), the shellfish folded in, packed into shells, topped with buttered crumbs and browned. A few things need translating before you start.
- Find the base recipe firstNothing here tells you the seasoning or the binder. Read the Deviled Crabs recipe in the same section and treat this page as a substitution note only.
- How much lobster that isTwo cups of picked, finely cut lobster meat is roughly 10-12 oz by weight. The book's "two small lobsters" probably means what dealers still call chicken lobsters, about 1 to 1 1/4 lb each, though two of that size may not quite make two cups; two 1 1/2 lb lobsters will give you at least as much meat with less picking.
- Cut, do not shred"Cut fine" means small dice, not a paste. Lobster mixed too fine disappears into the binder and you lose the reason for using lobster instead of crab.
- Do not cook it twiceThe meat is already boiled. Fold it into the hot binder off the heat and bake only long enough to brown the crumbs; the book gives no temperature, but a hot oven of about 400F for 10-15 minutes will do it. Extended baking turns lobster tail meat fibrous and squeaky.
- Tomalley and coralSome period shellfish recipes work the green tomalley and any red coral into the sauce for colour and flavour, though this one does not mention them. Both are edible, though current advice is to eat tomalley sparingly because it concentrates contaminants; leave it out if that concerns you.
- The shellsSplit the bodies lengthwise, remove the meat, then scrub the half-shells and boil them a few minutes before filling. Set them on a bed of coarse salt or crumpled foil in the pan so they sit level.
- YieldFour filled half-shells, enough for four as a first course or two as a light supper with bread and salad.
"Deviling" was established in English cooking by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and meant sharp seasoning -- above all mustard and cayenne -- worked into rich meat or fish and usually finished with browned crumbs. Applied to shellfish it solved a practical problem, since a deviled mixture stretches a modest amount of picked meat and lets it be prepared ahead and browned at the last moment. Lobster's presence in an American cookbook of this period also owes something to the ice-packed rail shipments that had made a regional New England food available to city households, though by the later nineteenth century lobster was rising in price and status rather than being simply cheap.