Lobster Patties
INGREDIENTS for 8 patties. A medium-sized lobster, 4 tablespoonfuls of Béchamel, 6 drops of anchovy sauce, lemon-juice, cayenne to taste. AVERAGE COST, with the paste, 2s. 9d.
Line the patty-pans with puff-paste and put into each a small piece of bread, cover with paste, brush over with egg and bake of a light colour. Take as much lobster as is required, mince the meat very fine and add the above ingredients; stir it over the minutes; remove the lids of the patty-cases, take out the bread, fill with fire for 5 minutes remove the lids of the the mixture and replace the covers.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A late-Victorian savoury of minced lobster in a thick white sauce, served in individual puff-paste cases. The printed text is garbled in the middle — a line of type has been duplicated and displaced — but the sequence is clear enough: bake the cases blind with a bread plug inside, make the filling, warm it through, then fill.
- The hinge: warm the filling, do not cook itThe lobster is already cooked. Five minutes over the fire is meant to heat it and thicken the sauce, no more; a genuine simmer turns lobster meat fibrous and squeaky. Keep it below a bubble and take it off as soon as it is hot.
- Patty-pans and puff-pastePatty-pans are small tartlet or bun tins, roughly 2 to 2½ inches across. "Puff-paste" is puff pastry — all-butter bought pastry is a fair substitute. Modern cooks would generally use bought vol-au-vent cases or cut rounds and lids from rolled puff.
- Why the breadThe piece of bread is a blind-baking dummy: it holds the case open and stops the base rising into the cavity. It is discarded, not eaten. Ceramic baking beans in a paper-lined case do the same job.
- Oven heatBeeton says only to bake "of a light colour", and gives no temperature. Puff pastry needs a hot oven for its lift; modern practice would suggest something around 425F/220C. "Light colour" means pale gold rather than deep brown.
- BéchamelBechamel -- Four tablespoonfuls suggests a thick white sauce, stiff enough to bind the mince rather than pool. Beeton's Bechamel is built on white (veal or chicken) stock with cream, infused with onion and herbs; a plain thick white sauce with a scrape of nutmeg will serve.
- Anchovy sauceMeasuring in drops suggests a concentrated bottled anchovy condiment rather than the thinner pouring sauce sold today. Use a scant 1/4 teaspoon of anchovy paste or a few drops of fish sauce and taste before adding more; it should register as savoury depth, not as anchovy.
- Lemon and cayenneBoth are given without quantity because they are corrective seasonings. Reckon on the juice of a quarter lemon and a pinch of cayenne for this amount, added at the end and adjusted off the heat.
- How much lobster"As much as is required" is vague by design. A medium lobster of about 1½ lb yields roughly 6 oz of picked meat, which is about right for eight small patties with the sauce. Include the coral if you have it, sieved into the sauce for colour.
- Cost and serving2s. 9d. for eight patties was not a trifling sum in a household kitchen. Serve them warm, as a hot savoury course or a lunch dish, and eat them the same hour: reheated puff pastry with a wet filling goes sodden.
Patties of this kind -- small covered puff-paste cases with a rich minced filling -- were a fixture of English dinner service through the nineteenth century, appearing as an entree or a supper dish. Part of their appeal was structural: the case could be baked ahead and filled at the last minute, which suited a kitchen sending out several courses at once. Beeton's note that they are "seasonable at any time" fits a period in which lobster could be carried inland by rail, and in which tinned lobster was also becoming available. The bread plug is an old kitchen trick, and a reminder that baking beans as a manufactured object are a comparatively recent convenience.