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Mushroom-and-Lobster Sandwiches
Sauté the caps of half a pound of mushrooms in a little butter about five minutes, adding half a sliced onion if desired. Cover with highly seasoned stock and let simmer until very tender; chop and press through a sieve, and, if very moist, reduce to the consistency of a thick purée. Add an equal quantity of lobster meat pounded smooth in a mortar. Season to taste with salt, pepper, lemon juice and, if desired, tomato catsup. When cool use as any filling.
A two-part spread: mushrooms cooked down to a dry purée, then an equal weight of pounded lobster. The whole thing succeeds or fails on how much moisture you drive off.
- The hinge: reduce it hardIf the mushroom purée is at all wet the filling will soak the bread within minutes. Cook it down until it mounds on a spoon and pulls away from the pan, then cool completely before combining with the lobster.
- Caps only, and whyCaps only -- Hill calls for the caps of half a pound of mushrooms. The stems can go into the simmering liquid rather than be discarded.
- Highly seasoned stockThe recipe specifies only that the stock be highly seasoned. A commercial low-sodium broth will taste of nothing here; reduce it first, or use a fish or shellfish stock to echo the lobster.
- Sieve and mortarA food processor does both jobs. Pulse the mushrooms to a coarse paste and return them to the pan to dry, and pulse the lobster only briefly — overworked lobster turns stringy and pasty rather than smooth.
- Equal quantity"An equal quantity" is ambiguous: Hill does not say whether to match the finished puree by weight or by volume. Judge it by eye against the puree you actually have.
- Tomato catsupCatsups of the period varied, and many were thinner and sharper than the modern bottle. A teaspoon of tomato paste with a little vinegar may sit closer to the intent than ketchup, which pushes the filling toward sweetness.
- Yield and breadBread -- The recipe gives no yield or bread instructions. Thin-cut bread, crusts off, cut in fingers or triangles suits it; butter the bread to the edges so the moist filling cannot reach the crumb.
- KeepingCooked shellfish bound in a moist purée is a short-lived thing. Make the filling the same day, keep it refrigerated until you assemble, and serve the sandwiches within a couple of hours.
This comes from the sandwich chapter of Janet McKenzie Hill's turn-of-the-century collection, written when the tea sandwich was a set piece of American entertaining. The technique is straight out of the professional kitchen of the day: a mushroom purée sieved and bound with pounded meat or shellfish, then repurposed for a genteel domestic tea table. Lobster was a practical choice for New England households then, and Hill, who edited the Boston Cooking School Magazine, wrote for readers who could get it easily. The mortar and the sieve are the tell: this is a recipe that assumes smooth pastes are the work of a morning's hand labour.