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Scalloped Lobster
2 lb. lobster. 1/2 teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne 1½ cups White Sauce II 2 teaspoons lemon juice Remove lobster meat from shell and cut in cubes. Heat in White Sauce and add seasonings. Refill lobster shells, cover with buttered crumbs, and bake until crumbs are brown. To prevent lobster shells from curling over lobster while baking, insert small wooden skewers of sufficient length to keep shell in its original shape. To assist in preserving color of shell, brush over with olive oil before putting into oven. Scalloped lobster may be baked in buttered scallop shells, or in a buttered baking-dish.
A late-Victorian way of stretching cooked lobster with a butter-and-milk sauce and returning it to the shell. The printed ingredient list is clipped mid-way, so the quantity of lobster is missing along with the crumbs and butter for the topping.
- How much lobsterThe seasonings and 1½ cups of sauce suit about 2 cups of cooked lobster meat, which is roughly two 1¼–1½ lb boiled lobsters. Any more and the sauce will not coat it.
- White Sauce IIFarmer's white sauces are graded by thickness, from thin to thick. The proportions for her White Sauce II should be taken from the book's own sauce section rather than assumed, as the numbering and quantities vary between editions; scale whatever it gives to 1½ cups.
- Buttered crumbsBread crumbs tossed with melted butter; reckon about 1 cup crumbs to 2 tablespoons melted butter. The recipe does not say whether soft or dry crumbs are meant.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the recipe says only to bake until the crumbs are brown. A hot oven will colour them in roughly 10 to 15 minutes without drying the filling.
- The lobster is already cookedThis is a reheating job. Warm the meat in the sauce only until it is hot through, and get it out of the oven as soon as the crumbs colour; long baking turns lobster fibrous and squeaks against the teeth.
- Lemon and cayenneThe recipe adds the seasonings after the meat has been heated through in the sauce. The 2 teaspoons of lemon juice will thin the sauce slightly and is best not boiled hard afterwards.
- The shellsSplit half-shells curl in dry heat. The wooden skewers are a genuine fix, and the brushing of olive oil keeps the shell red rather than chalky. A gratin dish or individual ramekins do the job with none of the fuss.
- YieldThe lobster quantity is missing from the printed list, so this is an estimate: on about 2 cups of meat, roughly four servings as a first course, or two as a supper dish with bread and a salad.
"Scalloped" (older spelling escalloped) meant any dish bound with sauce, crumbed and browned, and its name is usually traced to the scallop shells that served as baking dishes long before ovenproof china was common — Farmer's alternative of "buttered scallop shells" preserves that sense. Lobster's place in a book like this marks a shift: through much of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries American lobster was cheap and plentiful, but canning, rail transport and the shore-resort trade of the later 1800s turned it into a fashionable protein by the time the Boston Cooking School was teaching. The recipe belongs to the same family as lobster Newburg and the chafing-dish cookery then popular in Boston and New York — cooked shellfish, a rich white or cream sauce, a whisper of cayenne, and presentation in the shell for effect.