Lobster Cream
Pour one-half pint of hot, boiled milk over a small cup of bread crumbs; when nearly cold add three beaten eggs, the lobster chopped fine, two teaspoons of anchovy sauce and a large pinch of cayenne. Stir well and mix in two or three tablespoons of cream. Pour into a buttered mold, cover with buttered paper and steam one hour. Serve with anchovy or any other good fish sauce.
A steamed lobster custard, closer to a fish quenelle loaf than anything creamy. The whole dish turns on gentle heat: the water under the mold must never do more than shiver, or the eggs curdle and weep.
- Half a pintOne cup of milk, scalded. A "small cup" of bread crumbs is about 1 cup of soft fresh crumbs, not dried — dried crumbs will drink the milk and give a dense, pasty loaf.
- How much lobsterThe original assumes you have picked a lobster and know it. One 1½ lb lobster yields roughly a cup of meat, which is the right proportion here. Canned or frozen picked meat works if drained well and squeezed dry.
- Anchovy sauceA thin, sharp bottled fish sauce of the period; bottled anchovy sauce and essence are still made, though not quite the same product. About 1 teaspoon of anchovy paste loosened with a splash of water stands in for the two teaspoons called for.
- Let the milk cool"When nearly cold" is not fussiness — hot crumb mixture will scramble the eggs on contact. Wait until it is barely warm before beating them in.
- The mold and the paperA 1-quart pudding basin or charlotte mold, well buttered. Buttered parchment tied down, or buttered foil crimped over the rim, keeps condensation off the surface.
- SteamingSet the mold on a rack in a covered pot with boiling water reaching halfway up its side, and hold the water at a bare simmer. A hard boil pits and toughens the custard.
- DonenessAn hour is right for a full quart mold; smaller molds or ramekins need 25-35 minutes. It is set when a knife slid into the center comes out clean, about 175F.
- Turning out and servingRest 10 minutes before unmolding so the loaf firms and releases. Serves four as a light main course with anchovy sauce, or six sliced cold.
Butterick's fish chapter belongs to the era when a molded, steamed "cream" or "shape" was the standard way to make an expensive ingredient stretch and look like a composed dish. The technique descends from English forcemeat and pudding cookery, where minced fish bound with crumbs, eggs and cream was steamed in a basin — the same logic behind the French quenelle, only without the sieving. Anchovy sauce, a commercial essence widely available in the nineteenth century, was the era's all-purpose seasoning for fish, doing the work salt and lemon do now.