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Lobster Hearts
1 recipe baking powder pie pastry 2 tablespoons shortening 3 tablespoons flour 2 cups milk salt and pepper 1 teaspoon lemon juice 1 can lobster white of egg Make a rich baking powder pie pastry, cut one--third into narrow strips, one--fourth inch thick. Roll rest one inch thick, cut with heart--shaped cutter and place strips around the edge to form a nest, sticking with a little water. Make a cream sauce of the shortening, flour and milk, and add the liquid drained from the can of lobster. Boil for five minutes in a double boiler, stirring constantly till smooth. Season and add lemon juice. Remove bones from lobster and heat in the cream sauce. Fill pastry shells with this mixture, first brushing the inside with white of egg. Bake for 20 minutes. Serves 6.
A bridge-luncheon dish built on canned lobster and a plain white sauce, served in heart-shaped pastry cases. Two of the original numbers need attention before you start.
- Pastry thicknessRolling the base rounds "one inch thick" would give you biscuits, not pastry shells. Roll both the bases and the border strips to about a quarter inch, which is what the strips call for.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given. Baking powder pastry of this type wants a hot oven, 425F, for the 20 minutes indicated; at lower heat the shells go pale and heavy.
- Bake the shells firstA filled raw shell will not crisp. Assemble the hearts, brush the inside with egg white, bake them empty until set and lightly coloured, then fill with the hot lobster mixture and return them briefly to heat through. The egg white is there to seal the pastry against the sauce.
- The sauce will not boilThe sauce will not boil hard -- a double boiler rarely brings a sauce to a true rolling boil. Cook the roux and milk over direct low heat until it thickens and loses its raw-flour taste, then hold it over hot water. Five minutes of gentle cooking is enough for 3 tablespoons of flour.
- Sauce consistencyThree tablespoons of flour to 2 cups of milk plus the canning liquid gives a thin sauce that will run out of the pastry. Use 4 tablespoons, or reduce the milk to 1 1/2 cups.
- Canned lobsterPeriod cans were small, on the order of a half-pound or less. Modern canned or frozen lobster works, as does a pound of cooked lobster or, honestly, langostino or crab. The instruction to "remove bones" means the bits of shell and cartilage that came with older canned lobster; pick the meat over regardless.
- Lemon and seasoningCanned shellfish liquid is salty, so season after it goes into the sauce, not before. The single teaspoon of lemon juice is doing real work against the flat sweetness of the milk; more is not out of place.
- ShorteningTwo tablespoons of shortening in the sauce can be butter, which tastes better with shellfish. Keep the shortening for the pastry, where it does the flaking.
- YieldSix shells, enough for a bridge table and a half. It is a light course; plan a salad alongside.