Creamed Lobster
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon pepper
1 cup milk
2 cups boiled or canned lobster
Make a white sauce with the fat, flour and milk. Add lobster cut into small pieces and salt and pepper. Some cooks add a teaspoon of curry-powder.
Sometimes this preparation is placed in greased or oiled scallop shells, sprinkled with fine seasoned bread or cracker-crums and browned in the oven.
A plain white sauce folded around cooked lobster, either served as is or gratinéed in shells. The only real risk is overcooking the lobster in the sauce.
- Seasoning is out of proportionA teaspoon of pepper for two cups of lobster in a cup of sauce will dominate everything. Start with a quarter teaspoon of white pepper and the teaspoon of salt, then taste — canned lobster is already salty.
- The hinge: add the lobster off the heatThe lobster is already cooked. Bring the sauce to its full thickness first, then stir the meat in with the pan off the burner and warm it through gently. Simmering it in the sauce turns the meat stringy and squeaks against the tooth.
- White sauce ratioTwo tablespoons butter and two of flour to one cup milk is the standard medium white sauce, and thick enough to coat the meat here. Cook the roux a minute or two without browning before the milk goes in.
- Lobster quantityTwo cups of picked meat is roughly 10–12 oz, which means two or three 1¼ lb hard-shell lobsters, or two to three 6-oz cans. Claw and knuckle meat holds up better in sauce than tail.
- Scallop shellsNatural shells are still sold as bakeware, but individual gratin dishes or 6-oz ramekins do the same job. Grease them, fill, top with buttered crumbs.
- Oven for browningThe original gives none. Since everything is already hot, use a 425F oven for 8–10 minutes, or run the dishes under the broiler until the crumbs colour.
- Curry powderIf you take the suggestion, bloom the powder in the butter before adding the flour — a half teaspoon is plenty for this volume. Raw curry powder stirred into finished sauce tastes dusty.
- YieldServes four as a first course or on toast, or two as a main dish.
Creamed lobster belongs to the great age of the American white sauce, when a béchamel and a set of scallop shells could turn any cooked protein into a company dish — hence creamed chicken, creamed sweetbreads, creamed oysters, and the whole family of things served "au gratin" in the same shells. Butterick published its household books as a companion trade to its dress patterns, aimed at middle-class women running kitchens without staff, and the appearance of "boiled or canned lobster" as equal options tells you a good deal about the period: canned lobster from Maine and the Canadian Maritimes was cheap and widely distributed in the later nineteenth century, well before fresh lobster acquired its luxury reputation. The curry powder mentioned in passing was a standard English-influenced flavouring in American cookbooks of the era, often a commercial blend.