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Hawaiian Lobster Curry
(ADA D. WAGG.) INGREDIENTS. 1½ tablespoonfuls of butter. 1/2 an onion, chopped 1 clove of garlic, very fine.
A small piece of grated ginger root. 1½ tablespoonfuls of cornstarch. 1½ tablespoonfuls of curry powder.
1 pint of milk.
I grated cocoanut.
Meat of a lobster weighing 2 pounds.
Salt and pepper to taste.
Method.-Grate the cocoanut and set it aside to soak an hour in one pint of milk. Sauté the onion and garlic in the butter, add the cornstarch and seasonings, and cook until frothy; add the milk strained from the cocoanut, gradually, and, when the sauce boils up once, add the lobster; salt and pepper to taste.
Lobster à la Bechamel.
Meat of 2 lobsters.
INGREDIENTS. 4 tablespoonfuls of butter. 4 tablespoonfuls of flour.
Salt and pepper.
Grating of nutmeg.
1 cup of cream. 4 yolks of eggs.
1 cup of white stock, seasoned with mace, bay leaf, etc.
1 teaspoonful of lemon juice.
Dried and sifted coral.
A simple curried lobster in coconut milk, built in a chafing dish over a spirit lamp. The whole dish hinges on the coconut infusion, which has to be started an hour before anything else.
- Coconut milk, the 1900 wayGrating a whole coconut and steeping it in a pint of dairy milk, then straining, is the period method for coconut milk. A 13-14 oz can of unsweetened coconut milk thinned with about half a cup of whole milk gives a comparable sauce; if you want the original character, use fresh or frozen grated coconut steeped as directed and squeeze the solids hard before discarding.
- Curry powder quantityThe curry powder is printed as half a tablespoon while the butter and cornstarch are one and a half; the plural 'tablespoonfuls' may point to a dropped '1½', though half a tablespoon may be exactly what was meant. Start with 1½ teaspoons, taste the sauce before the lobster goes in, and build up.
- Cook the spices, not just the starch"Cook until frothy" means the butter, cornstarch and curry are bubbling together as a roux for a minute or two. This is what kills the raw, dusty taste of the powder; rushing it is the usual reason a curry sauce tastes chalky.
- Add the lobster last and brieflyThe lobster is already cooked. It goes in after the sauce has boiled up once, and needs only two or three minutes over low heat to warm through. Held at a simmer it turns fibrous and squeaks against the teeth.
- Lobster yieldA 2 lb lobster gives roughly 8 oz of picked meat. Two 1 lb lobsters, or 8 oz of frozen or fresh-picked claw and tail meat, substitute directly. Cut into bite-sized pieces rather than shredding.
- Ginger and garlic"A small piece of grated ginger root" is about a teaspoon grated on a fine rasp. One clove of garlic is deliberately restrained here; keep it that way so the coconut and curry stay in front.
- Yield and servingServes three to four as a light main course, more as one dish in a chafing-dish supper. Plain boiled rice is the natural partner; the sauce is thin enough to want it.
Chafing-dish cookery was at its height in American households around 1900, when a spirit lamp and a copper pan let a hostess cook at the table without a servant, and lobster was the fashionable protein for it. The "Hawaiian" label reflects the annexation-era vogue for the islands in American magazines and cookbooks; the dish is essentially an Anglo-Indian curry sauce with coconut milk standing in for part of the cream, a lineage generally traced to the British colonial kitchen rather than to Hawaii. Recipes in this genre were routinely credited to the individual contributor, as here.