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Lobster Sauce
325. Take a large fresh lobster, carefully pick out the berries and all the inside: cut it small; make a sauce with a lump of flour and butter, a little milk or cream, a very small quantity of essence of anchovy, a very little mace, beat fine, and cayenne; then pull the rest of the lobster to pieces with two forks; add the sauce, by degrees, to the berries, and put in the lobster. Give it a boil, stirring all the time, and it is ready to serve.
A Victorian sauce for boiled turbot, salmon or cod, built on a butter-and-flour liaison enriched with lobster coral. The instructions assume a cook who already knows the proportions, so the working quantities have to be inferred.
- The lobster is already cookedThe lobster is almost certainly already cooked -- the meat is pulled to pieces with two forks and the mixture is only given a boil at the end, both of which assume a boiled lobster, whether bought ready-boiled or boiled at home. Use a cooked 1 1/2 to 2 lb lobster.
- "Berries" and "all the inside"The berries are the external roe of a hen lobster, dark green when raw and coral-red once cooked; "the inside" is the soft tomalley from the body cavity. Both are the flavour and colour of the sauce. A cock lobster has no berries, though it will still have tomalley, so ask the fishmonger for a hen.
- A lump of flour and butterFlour and butter kneaded together cold, then whisked into the hot liquid. Use 1 oz butter worked with 1 oz flour, loosened with roughly 3/4 cup milk or cream.
- Essence of anchovyA thin bottled anchovy extract, not the same thing as modern paste. Substitute about 1/2 teaspoon anchovy paste, or two fillets mashed to nothing. It should not read as anchovy in the finished sauce, only as depth.
- Mace, beat fineBlade mace pounded in a mortar. Ground mace from a jar works; a scant 1/8 teaspoon is the "very little" intended, and more will dominate the lobster.
- Add the sauce to the berries, not the reverseWorking the hot sauce gradually into the chopped coral and tomalley lets them disperse smoothly and tints the whole thing pink. Dumping the coral into a pan of sauce gives streaks and grainy specks.
- "Give it a boil" is briefThe point is to cook out the flour and set the coral, not to stew the meat. Bring it just to a simmer, stir for a minute, and take it off. Lobster held at a boil turns dry and cottony.
- Salt and yieldNo salt is specified; taste before adding any, since the anchovy essence brings salt of its own. The yield depends on the size of the lobster, but this is a sauce for one large plain-boiled fish.
Lobster sauce was a common accompaniment of the English fish course in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, poured over boiled turbot, salmon or cod in the way melted butter and parsley served plainer fish. The coral and tomalley carry more flavour and far more colour than the tail meat, and they enrich a butter sauce into something rich enough to stand against a large plain-boiled fish. Bottled anchovy essence was sold by grocers from the later eighteenth century onward and was among the standard English savoury seasonings for fish sauces, alongside the mushroom and walnut ketchups already on the shelf. The recipe has the berries and inside cut small but the rest of the lobster pulled to pieces with two forks, leaving the meat in ragged strands.