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Creamed Lobster (Melt two tablespoons butter)
Melt two tablespoons butter; add one fourth teaspoon salt, few grains cayenne, two tablespoons flour, one cup cream, few gratings nutmeg. Cook ten minutes, add meat from a two-pound lobster, cut in small pieces, the grated coral, and one tablespoon butter. One teaspoon Worcestershire and one teaspoon mustard may be added.
A plain cream sauce carrying cooked lobster, written for a chafing dish at the table. The whole thing takes fifteen minutes once the lobster is picked.
- The lobster is already cookedThe recipe assumes you are buying or boiling a lobster and picking the meat before you start. A two-pound lobster yields roughly 8 oz of meat, which is what this sauce is built for.
- Cook ten minutesThat timing suits gentle, indirect heat, such as a chafing-dish blazer set over a hot-water pan, where everything moves slowly. In a saucepan over direct heat the roux and cream come together in two to three minutes; cook it longer only if it still tastes of raw flour, and keep the heat low so the cream does not break.
- CoralThe dark green roe of a female lobster, which turns coral red when cooked. Grate or mash it and stir it in at the end for colour and a concentrated sea flavour. Males have none, and lobster sold as picked meat often comes without it, so the dish works fine if you skip it.
- Add the lobster off the heatThe meat is cooked. Fold it in, warm it through for a minute or two, and stop. Held at a simmer it goes stringy and squeaky.
- The last tablespoon of butterNot an afterthought. Stirred in off the heat it gives the sauce gloss and body, the same move as finishing a pan sauce.
- MustardA teaspoon of dry mustard powder is most likely what is meant in a book of this period. Prepared mustard in the same amount is milder and adds vinegar; use a scant tablespoon if that is what you have.
- CreamCream of this period was generally richer than supermarket half-and-half. Heavy cream, or a mix of half cream and half whole milk, gives the intended texture.
- Yield and servingEnough for two generous or three modest servings. Spoon it over buttered toast points, split baking-powder biscuits, or into pastry shells; a pinch more cayenne at the table suits it.
Lowney's Cook Book was issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate manufacturer that, like Baker's and Royal Baking Powder, found that a general cookbook carrying its name sold its product better than an advertisement. Dishes of this kind are a period marker: between roughly 1890 and 1915 the spirit-lamp chafing dish was a fashionable middle-class possession, and creamed lobster, lobster Newburg and welsh rarebit were among its standard repertoire, cooked in front of guests after the theatre or at a late supper. The recipe reads as terse as it does because the form was assumed to be familiar — a white sauce, something rich folded in, toast underneath. Coral was prized then in a way it is not now, both for colour and because a whole lobster bought live was the normal way to get the meat.