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Buttered Lobster
Salt and pepper Lemon juice 3 tablespoons butter Remove lobster meat from shell and chop slightly. Melt butter, add lobster, and when heated, season and serve garnished with lobster claws. 2 lb. lobster
A two-minute dish that assumes you already have a boiled lobster on the counter. Everything depends on not cooking the meat a second time.
- Start with cooked lobsterFannie Farmer's readers would have boiled or steamed the lobster first, then picked it; the recipe only reheats the meat. A 2 lb hard-shell lobster yields roughly 8 oz of picked meat, enough for two as a light course.
- The hinge: warm, do not cookLobster meat that has already been cooked turns fibrous and squeaky within a minute of hitting real heat. Keep the butter foaming but not browning, and pull the pan the moment the meat is hot through.
- Chop slightlyThat means large, recognisable pieces — tail cut into thick coins, claws left whole. Fine dicing loses the texture that is the whole point.
- Butter quantityThree tablespoons for one lobster is a sauce, not a greasing. Whisking in a spoonful of the lobster's own juices or a little water helps it emulsify rather than separate into oil and milk solids.
- SeasoningThe original gives no amounts for salt, pepper and lemon. Salt sparingly — lobster is naturally saline — and add the lemon off the heat so it stays bright.
- The garnish"Garnished with lobster claws" is not explained: it may mean the cleaned claw shells set on the plate for looks, or the claws left whole and intact. Toast points or the cleaned half-shells are a serving suggestion, not part of the original.
Buttered lobster appears among the shellfish recipes in the 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Through much of the nineteenth century lobster was cheap coastal protein, canned in quantity in Maine and the Maritimes and sold live in Boston markets; its luxury status came later. Fannie Farmer's book is remembered for insisting on level, standardised measurements, though this recipe leaves the seasoning to taste. The recipe is essentially a restatement of the simplest possible treatment: good meat, good butter, acid, heat, stop.