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Lobsters To Boil and Open a Lobster
Fill a kettle with warm water (not boiling), put in the lobster head downward, add a tablespoonful of salt, cover the kettle and stand it over a very quick fire. They suffer less by being put into warm than in boiling water. In the latter they are killed by heat, in warm water they are smothered. A medium sized lobster should boil half an hour; a larger one three-quarters. Cooking them too long makes them tough, and the meat will stick to the shell. When done and cool separate the tail from the body and twist off all the claws; shake out carefully the tom-alley (this is the liver of the lobster, and may be known by its greenish color); also the coral. Then draw the body from the shell, remove the stomach (sometimes called the lady), which is found immediately under the head, and throw this away. Now split the body through the centre and pick the meat from the cells. Cut the under side of the tail shell, loosen the meat and take it out in one solid piece. Now split the meat of the tail open and you will uncover a little vein running its entire length, this remove. The vein is not always the same color; sometimes it is red, sometimes black and sometimes white; but in all cases it must be carefully taken out and thrown away. The stomach or lady, the vein and the spongy fingers between the body and shell are the only parts not eatable. Crack the claws and take out the meat.
To serve plain boiled lobster, arrange the meat thus taken out in the centre of a cold dish, garnishing with the claws, sprigs of fresh parsley, hard boiled eggs cut into quarters, and pickled beets cut into fancy shapes. Let each person season to suit one's self.
The picking and dressing instructions here are still exactly right; the cooking time is not. Treat the anatomy lesson as the useful part and ignore the clock.
- The timing is the thing to changeHalf an hour will reduce a lobster to cotton wool. A 1 to 1 1/4 lb lobster needs about 8 to 10 minutes in hard-boiling water, a 2 lb lobster about 15, counted from the moment the water returns to the boil. The author's own warning that overcooking makes the meat tough and sticky is sound advice attached to the wrong number.
- Warm water is no longer recommendedThe gradual heating described here — smothering rather than killing — is generally thought to prolong the animal's distress rather than shorten it. Modern guidance leans towards a rapid dispatch with a knife through the head, or plunging straight into a rolling boil, head first, lid on.
- SaltA single tablespoon in a full kettle does little. Lobster is best cooked in heavily salted water — roughly sea strength, about 1/2 cup of salt per gallon — or in actual seawater if you have it.
- TomalleyThe "tom-alley" is the hepatopancreas, liver and pancreas in one organ. It was prized in 1900 and still tastes of concentrated lobster, but health agencies now advise against eating it, since contaminants and paralytic shellfish toxins concentrate there. The coral — the dark green roe of a hen lobster, which turns bright red when cooked — carries no such advisory.
- "The lady" and the veinThe stomach sac behind the head and the dark thread running the length of the tail are the stomach and intestine. Removing both is still correct, and the varying colour the author notes simply reflects what the animal last ate.
- YieldA lobster gives roughly a quarter of its live weight in picked meat, so a 1 1/4 lb lobster yields about 5 oz. For the cold garnished platter described, allow one lobster per person, or two lobsters for four if it is part of a larger cold table.
- CoolingThe recipe assumes the lobster cools in air, which lets it go on cooking. Lift it into ice water until it is cool through, then drain and pick; chilling also tends to help the tail meat come away from the shell in the single solid piece the author wants.
Nineteenth-century American lobster was abundant and cheap along the northeastern coast — cheap enough that it is often said to have fed prisons and farm labourers before the canneries and the railroads turned it into a luxury; by the end of the century it had become a genteel salad and chafing-dish ingredient. The vocabulary here is period New England kitchen talk: "tom-alley" for tomalley, the liver, and "the lady" for the stomach sac. The garnish of quartered hard-boiled eggs and beets cut into fancy shapes is pure late-Victorian table-setting, where a cold dish was expected to be composed as much as cooked.