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Scald
Remove lobster meat from shell and cut in dice. milk with bay leaf, remove bay leaf and make a white sauce of butter, flour, and milk; add salt, cayenne, nutmeg, parsley, yolks of eggs slightly beaten, and lemon juice. Add lobster dice, refill shells, cover with buttered crumbs, and bake until crumbs are brown. One-half chicken stock and one-half cream may be used for sauce if a richer dish is desired. 2 lb. lobster. 1 1/2 cups milk. Bit of bay leaf. 3 tablespoons butter. 3 tablespoons flour. 1/2 teaspoon salt. Few grains cayenne. Slight grating nutmeg. 1 teaspoon chopped parsley. 1 teaspoon lemon juice. Yolks 2 eggs. 1/2 cup buttered crumbs.
The text as printed has lost a line — the milk is meant to be scalded with a bay leaf, which is what the stray title "Scald" refers to. No quantities survive, so the proportions below are the standard ones from the same book's sauce chapter.
- The missing first stepScald the milk with a bay leaf (bring it just to the point where a ring of bubbles forms at the edge, about 180F), then lift the leaf out. This is the infusion the recipe assumes you have made before the flour and butter go in.
- White sauce proportionsA standard white sauce of 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour and 1 cup milk gives about the right body for binding lobster in a shell. The recipe as printed gives no quantities at all, so what follows is a reconstruction: for two lobsters, about 1 1/2 cups liquid, 3 tablespoons each butter and flour, 2 egg yolks, and seasoning to taste -- salt, a few grains of cayenne, a grating of nutmeg, a tablespoon of chopped parsley and a teaspoon of lemon juice.
- The hinge: yolks off the heatDraw the pan from the fire before the beaten yolks go in, and add the lemon juice last of all. Yolks stirred into a boiling sauce curdle in seconds, and acid added while the sauce is still on heat makes the curdling worse.
- The lobster is already cookedThe recipe assumes boiled lobster taken from the shell. The bake is only to heat through and brown the crumbs, so keep the dice large — half-inch — or they turn stringy in the oven.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives no oven setting at all, only 'bake until crumbs are brown'. About 400F for 12 to 15 minutes will colour the crumbs without drying the filling first.
- Buttered crumbsAbout one cup of soft bread crumbs tossed with 2 tablespoons melted butter will cover the shells of two lobsters. Dry commercial crumbs absorb less butter and scorch faster, so soft crumbs from day-old bread suit the dish better.
- Shells and substitutesSplit shells from a 1 1/2 lb lobster hold the filling well; scrub and dry them first. Individual gratin dishes or large scallop shells do the same job if the shells were broken in picking.
- YieldTwo lobsters filled this way serve four as a first course or two as a main dish with bread and a salad.
- The richer versionHalf chicken stock and half cream in place of the milk, as the recipe permits, gives a sauce closer to a veloute and reads as more savoury.
Baked stuffed lobster in the shell belongs to the moment when New England lobster ceased to be cheap, low-status food and became a hotel and restaurant dish. The technique is French in descent: an egg-enriched white sauce of the kind American cooking schools taught as a base to be varied endlessly, returned to the natural vessel the shellfish arrived in. The closing note about chicken stock and cream 'if a richer dish is desired' is characteristic of the period's cookbooks, which often offered a plain version for the family table and a costlier one for company.