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Lobster (Select a live lobster)
Select a live lobster of medium size but heavy in proportion to its size. If the tail springs back quickly when straightened, the lobster is fresh.
To kill a lobster grasp it by the back and put its head under hot water; then its body, and quickly cover the kettle. The lobster will die immediately, but should remain in the water about twenty minutes, boiling all the time.
The meat should not be eaten until cold and should never be kept more than eighteen hours after cooking. It should not be removed from the shell until it is to be used.
Remove the meat from the shell, discarding the gills, stomach and intestines. Garnish with small clams and lettuce leaves.
A plain boiled lobster, with the era's real concern — freshness — carried in the instructions themselves. The timing is the one figure to ignore.
- Twenty minutes is too longA 1 to 1 1/4 lb lobster needs roughly 8 to 10 minutes at a hard boil from the moment the water returns to the boil; 1 1/2 to 2 lb takes 12 to 15. Twenty minutes leaves the tail meat fibrous and the claws chalky.
- "Heavy in proportion to its size"This is still the best test at the counter. A lobster that feels light for its length has recently moulted and the new shell is only partly filled with meat. The springing tail indicates a live, vigorous animal rather than one that has been sitting in a tank too long.
- Killing itHead first, lid on at once, is what the recipe describes; it says 'hot water' but adds that it should be boiling throughout. Immersion in water already at a hard boil remains standard practice, and a heavy knife tip driven in behind the eyes first is an alternative. Either way, do not start the lobster in cold or warm water.
- Salt the waterThe recipe omits it. Use about 1/4 cup salt per gallon, or clean sea water if you have it, and enough water to submerge the lobster completely.
- The eighteen-hour ruleProbably reflects ice-box rather than mechanical refrigeration. Cooked lobster meat keeps 2 to 3 days at 40F or below, but it loses sweetness quickly; the advice to leave it in the shell until wanted is sound and worth following.
- What to discardOut go the sand sac behind the eyes, the feathery gills and the dark intestinal vein down the tail. The green tomalley and any red coral are traditionally eaten, though current advisories suggest limiting tomalley because it concentrates contaminants.
- The clam garnishPresumably small cooked clams arranged around the plate; it is garnish, not part of the cooking, and can be skipped without loss.
- YieldA 1 1/4 lb lobster gives roughly 4 to 5 oz of picked meat, enough for one serving as a salad or two in a made dish.
The lobster here is Homarus americanus, the clawed lobster of the North Atlantic, which in the nineteenth century was cheap enough that it is often said to have been fed to servants and prisoners along the New England coast, and it was chiefly sold canned. What changed it into a luxury was the railroad and the live-shipping tank: a household well inland could buy a lobster still moving, which is why so much of the instruction is devoted to judging whether the creature is alive and full-shelled rather than to seasoning or sauce. The insistence that the meat be eaten cold and never kept more than eighteen hours belongs to the same world: without an ice box, shellfish spoiled fast.