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Fried Lobster
Remove lobster meat from shell. Use tail meat, divided in fourths, and large pieces of claw meat. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and lemon juice; dip in crumbs, egg, and again in crumbs; fry in deep fat, drain, and serve with Sauce Tartare. CLAMS UNION LEAGUE. - Page 185.
OYSTERS À LA BALLARD. - Page 181.
FRUIT COCKTAIL. - Page 569. 2 lb. lobster
A short recipe that assumes several things Fannie Farmer's readers already knew, chiefly that the lobster has already been boiled. Worked out, it is a straightforward crumbed deep-fry.
- Start with cooked lobster"Remove lobster meat from shell" presumes a boiled or steamed lobster, not a raw one; earlier pages in the shellfish chapter cover the boiling. A 2 lb lobster yields roughly a half pound of picked meat, enough for two as a course.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe only says "deep fat"; the book judges fat by how fast a cube of bread browns rather than by thermometer, and for crumbed, already-cooked food that corresponds to fat somewhere around 375-390F, hot enough to colour the crust in a minute or two. Cooler fat soaks the crumbs and the meat overcooks while you wait for browning.
- Crumbs, egg, crumbsThe double crumbing is the point: the first thin coat dries the wet lobster so the egg grips, and the second builds the shell. Beat the egg with a tablespoon of water and let the breaded pieces rest ten minutes before frying so the coating sets.
- TimingThe meat is cooked already, so you are only crisping the outside; 1 to 2 minutes is enough. Longer and lobster turns fibrous and squeaky, the same fault that ruins overcooked oysters.
- Crumbs"Crumbs" here means fine dry white breadcrumbs, not panko and not the coarse fresh crumbs. Sieved stale bread or unseasoned cracker crumbs are closest to the original texture.
- DrainingDrain on a rack rather than flat on paper, which steams the underside. Salt lightly the moment it comes out of the fat.
- The cross-referencesThe page numbers appended to the recipe are not ingredients. They are the book's index of related shellfish dishes and a fruit cocktail, printed as a run-on in this edition.
- Sauce TartareThe book's tartare is a hand-beaten mayonnaise with chopped additions along the lines of capers, olives and cucumber pickle. Any good mayonnaise-based version works, but keep it sharp; the fried crust wants acid.
Fried lobster belongs to the period when lobster had finished its climb from cheap coastal protein to hotel-menu luxury. Through the mid-nineteenth century New England lobster was abundant enough to be fed to servants and used as bait; by the time the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book appeared in 1896 canning and rail shipment had built a national market and driven prices up, and lobster shows up in Farmer's pages in croquettes, cutlets, Newburg, cocktails and this fry. The technique itself is generic to the book: crumb, egg, crumb, deep fat, tartare sauce, the same treatment given oysters, clams, fish and croquettes of every kind. What dates it most is the assumption that a cook would keep a kettle of deep fat ready and would know, without being told, that the lobster came out of the pot first.</p>