Home › Chafing-Dish Recipes › Curried Lobster
Curried Lobster
Cut one large lobster into dice. Put one tablespoon of butter into the blazer, add one tablespoon finely chopped onion. Let cook slowly for five minutes. Add one tablespoon of curry powder that has been mixed with two tablespoons of fiour. Let all boil for a minute or two and then gradually add one pint of warmed milk, rubbing it smooth. When well blended, add the diced lobster and, as it has previously been boiled, allow it to remain over the flame just long enough to become thoroughly heated in the sauce.
A chafing-dish curry that is really a lobster in curried béchamel. The whole thing works or fails on how briefly the lobster sits in the sauce.
- The blazerThe "blazer" is the upper pan of a chafing dish, set directly over the flame. Any wide, shallow skillet or sauté pan does the same job on a stovetop over medium heat.
- One large lobsterA 1½ to 2 lb boiled lobster yields roughly 1 to 1½ cups of picked meat. Two smaller lobsters, or the equivalent in cooked lobster tail and claw meat, work equally well.
- Do not let the lobster cook againThe meat is already boiled. Fold it in off the direct heat or at a bare simmer and give it two or three minutes at most — held longer it turns dry and stringy, which is the usual failure of this dish.
- Cook the curry powder outThe instruction to let the flour and curry "boil for a minute or two" in the butter matters. Raw curry powder tastes dusty and metallic; a minute in fat rounds it out. Keep the heat gentle so the spices do not scorch.
- Proportions and thicknessOne tablespoon butter to two tablespoons flour is a lean roux for a pint of milk, so the sauce stays thin. For a coating consistency reduce the milk to a generous cup and a half.
- Warmed milkThe recipe specifies warmed milk, added gradually while stirring, which helps the sauce come together smoothly and lump-free.
- SeasoningThe original gives none. It needs salt, and a squeeze of lemon at the end sharpens the sauce noticeably.
- YieldServes three to four on toast points or rice, or two as a main course.
Chafing-dish cookery had a real vogue in American households around 1900: the equipment let a hostess cook at the table without a servant or a kitchen trip, and the recipes that suited it were all quick assemblies of something already cooked — creamed oysters, lobster Newburg, rarebits, and curries like this one. The curry powder itself was a commercial blend, sold ready-mixed by grocers and treated as a single seasoning rather than a set of spices to be balanced, which is why the recipe simply calls for a tablespoon of it. Canned lobster, meanwhile, was widely sold for exactly this sort of made dish.