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Scalloped Lobster
Use recipe for Creamed Lobster and bake in lobster shell, scallop shells, ramekins, or baking dishes, covered with buttered and seasoned cracker crumbs. with small lobster claws and parsley.
This is a finishing instruction rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you have already made the book's Creamed Lobster and simply want it browned in shells. A few points fill in what the original leaves unsaid.
- The baseCreamed lobster in this period means cooked lobster meat folded into a thick white sauce — butter, flour, milk or cream, salt, cayenne or paprika, sometimes a little sherry. Make the sauce thick enough to hold its shape on a spoon, since it will loosen in the oven.
- Oven heatThe point is to brown crumbs on a filling that is already cooked, so use a hot oven, 425F, for about 10 to 15 minutes, or run the dishes under the broiler for two or three minutes once heated through. A slow oven will dry the sauce before the top colours.
- Don't recook the lobsterThis is the hinge. Lobster meat that has already been boiled turns fibrous and squeaky with a second long cooking. Heat only until the sauce bubbles at the edges and the crumbs take colour.
- Buttered crumbsCracker crumbs here means dry, plain soda or common crackers rolled fine, not seasoned commercial crumbs. Reckon about a tablespoon of melted butter to every quarter cup of crumbs, with salt and a little paprika; unbuttered crumbs stay pale and floury.
- VesselsReal scallop shells and lobster carapaces were standard serving ware in 1907 and are still sold as bakeware. Ramekins of about 6 ounces work identically; fill them no more than three-quarters full.
- Cleaning lobster shellsIf you bake in the body shell, scrub it and boil it briefly before filling. Shells that have sat with clinging tomalley and juices are not worth reusing.
- The truncated lineThe last sentence appears to have lost its opening words in the original setting; it most likely read 'Garnish with small lobster claws and parsley' — the little claws from the walking legs laid on top.
- YieldOne 1½ lb lobster yields roughly a cup to a cup and a half of meat, enough creamed to fill three or four ramekins as a first course, or two as a lunch dish.
Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard and issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer — one of the many turn-of-the-century cookbooks published to sell a branded ingredient, though its fish chapter has nothing to do with cocoa. "Scalloped" originally meant cooked and served in a scallop shell, and only later came to mean any dish layered with crumbs and baked; both senses are alive in this entry, which offers the shell, the ramekin and the baking dish as equals. Creaming and then browning was one common way of making a modest amount of lobster meat go further. The style is characteristic of the Boston cooking-school manner: a master preparation given once, then referred back to for a dozen variations rather than repeated.