Lobster Cream
INGREDIENTS for quart mould.-1 lobster, 3 eggs, 1/4 pint of cream, 1/2 pint of milk, a cupful of breadcrumbs, 2 teaspoonfuls of anchovy sauce, a little cagenne. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 6d.
Boil the milk and pour it over the breadcrumbs, chop the lobster fine and beat the eggs; and when the crumbs are nearly cold, LOBSTER, DEVILLED. mix with them; add the sauce, the seasoning and lastly the cream. Butter a mould, fill it with the mixture, put a buttered paper over the top and steam for an hour.
Any good fish sauce may be served with this.
TIME.-1 hour to steam.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Lobster Curry. (An Entrée.)-INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 persons. -1 lobster, 2 onions, 1 oz. of butter, 1 tablespoonful of curry-powder, 1/2 pint of medium stock, the juice of 1/2 lemon. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 6d.
Pick the meat from the shell and cut into nice square pieces; fry the onions of a pale brown in the butter, stir in the currypowder and stock and simmer till it thickens, when put in the lobster: stew the whole slowly for 1/2 hour, stirring occasionally and just before sending to table, put in the lemon-juice. Serve boiled rice with it, the same as for other curries.
TIME.-Altogether hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Lobster Cutlets. (An Entrée.)- INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-1 large hen lobster, 1 oz. of fresh butter, 1/2 saltspoonful of salt, pounded mace, grated nutmeg, cayenne and white pepper to taste, egg and bread-crumbs. AVERAGE COST, 3s. 6d.
Pick the meat from the shell and pound it in a mortar, with the butter and gradually add the mace an THE LOBSTER. and seasoning, well mixing the ingredients: beat all to a smooth paste and add a little of the spawn; divide the mixture into pieces of equal size and shape them like cutlets.
They should not be very thick. Brush them over with egg and sprinkle with bread-crumbs and stick a short piece of the small claw in the top of each; fry them a nice brown in boiling lard and drain them before the fire on a sieve reversed; arrange them nicely on a dish and pour béchamel in the middle, but not over the cutlets.
TIME.-About 8 minutes after the outlets are made.
SEASONABLE all the year.
A steamed savoury custard bound with breadcrumbs and eggs, turned out of a mould and sauced. It is closer to a fish pudding than to anything called a cream today.
- The lobsterBeeton gives no weight for "1 lobster" and no picked-meat yield. Buy it cooked, pick the claws and tail, and chop fine rather than mincing to a paste, or the set custard loses all texture.
- Imperial liquid measuresAn Imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so 1/4 pint of cream is 5 fl oz, a generous half cup. The milk quantity as printed is unclear; the proportions of the dish suggest about 1/2 pint (10 fl oz), enough to soak a cupful of crumbs to a soft paste without making the mixture pourable.
- Quart mouldAn Imperial quart is 40 fl oz, so a 1.2 litre pudding basin or charlotte mould is the right size. Butter it well and line the base with a disc of buttered paper if you want a clean turn-out.
- Anchovy sauceMost likely the bottled anchovy sauce or essence sold beside Worcestershire sauce, not a pasta sauce. If you cannot find it, mashed anchovy fillets or a scant teaspoon of anchovy paste with a little of the milk gives the same salty backbone; season for salt only after it goes in.
- Cool the crumbs firstThe instruction to let the soaked crumbs go nearly cold before adding the beaten eggs is the hinge of the recipe. Hot milk scrambles the eggs and the mould sets grainy and weeping instead of smooth.
- SteamingStand the covered mould on a trivet in a pan of gently simmering water reaching halfway up, and keep the water at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil. An hour is right for a full quart mould; test with a skewer, which should come out clean and hot.
- Serving and yieldThe recipe gives no number of servings. Turn it out while hot, and serve a plain fish sauce round the base, not poured over the top.
- Seasoning"A little cayenne" in a Victorian shellfish dish is a definite pinch, not a whisper; the custard is bland without it. A grating of nutmeg and a squeeze of lemon in the accompanying sauce both suit the dish.
Savoury "creams" of this kind ran right through late Victorian and Edwardian cookery: a pounded or chopped protein, a panada of crumbs soaked in milk, eggs to set it, cream to soften it, and an hour in the steamer. The technique was borrowed from French quenelle work but adapted for the English kitchen, where a steady steamer was easier to manage than a temperamental oven. It was also thrift dressed as elegance, since a single lobster stretched to feed six once bulked with crumbs and dairy, and bottled anchovy sauce supplied the savoury depth that a proper fish stock would otherwise have provided. Beeton's book gives a whole run of lobster entr hat lospster was then a common and comparatively affordable British shellfish rather than a luxury signal.