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Lobster Cutlets
Take out the meat from a large hen lobster or two small ones, place it in a mortar with some of its coral, and pound, mixing with it a little powdered mace, grated nutmeg, salt, pepper, and cayenne; beat the yolks of two eggs and the white of one together with a teaspoonful of anchovy sauce; then mix them with the above ingredients. Roll out, sprinkle a little flour over, and form it into the cutlets; dip a paste brush in beaten eggs, brush the cutlets over, roll them in breadcrumbs, and fry in boiling butter. Put one pint of melted butter in a saucepan with the coral and a teaspoonful of anchovy sauce, and make it hot. When the cutlets are browned, drain, arrange them in a circle on a hot dish, pour the sauce in the center and serve.
A Victorian-style croquette dressed up as a chop, and the whole thing hinges on binding: the pounded lobster must be stiff enough to hold a shape before it meets the fat. Chill it and the rest is straightforward.
- Chill before shapingPounded lobster bound with two yolks and a white is soft at room temperature and will slump in the pan. Spread the mixture in a shallow dish, refrigerate at least an hour until firm, then form the cutlets and chill again after breading.
- Hen lobster and coralA hen is a female lobster; the coral is her roe, dark green-black when raw and turning bright red-orange with heat. Retail lobster is not usually sorted by sex, so ask the fishmonger, or accept that you may be working without coral and season the sauce with a little tomato paste and paprika for colour instead. One large lobster means roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lb whole, yielding something like 6 to 8 oz of picked meat.
- The mortarA food processor does this in seconds, but pulse rather than run it: the texture should be a coarse paste with some shred left, not a mousse. Reserve a spoonful of the coral for the sauce as directed.
- Anchovy sauceA bottled Victorian condiment of anchovy, vinegar and spice, still sold in Britain. Substitute half a teaspoon of anchovy paste loosened with a few drops of vinegar, or mash one oil-packed fillet, for each teaspoon called for.
- "Melted butter"In this period the phrase means a thickened butter sauce, not simply liquid butter: roughly 2 tablespoons each butter and flour cooked together, then whisked with about a cup of hot water, milk or lobster stock. A full pint is far more than four to six cutlets need; half that is generous.
- Frying in boiling butterWhole butter browns and burns before the crumb sets. Use clarified butter or ghee at about 350F, roughly half an inch deep, and turn the cutlets once. Three or four minutes total is usually enough, since the lobster is presumed already cooked -- but the raw egg binder means the cutlets should be heated through, not merely coloured.
- Seasoning amountsThe spices are unmeasured. For 8 oz of meat, start with 1/4 teaspoon mace, a scant 1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg, a good pinch of cayenne and salt to taste; the anchovy brings its own salt.
- Yield and shapingEnough for four as a first course, two as a main. The traditional flourish is to press the mixture into small chop shapes and set the tip of a lobster leg or claw shell into the narrow end as a mock bone.
Lobster cutlets belong to a whole family of nineteenth-century dishes in which an expensive ingredient was pounded, bound and re-formed into the silhouette of something else, usually a lamb chop, complete with a false bone. The technique is generally traced to the French professional kitchen, where côtelettes of chicken, salmon or lobster were standard garnish and entrée work, and it is often said to have suited hotel service because the cutlets could be shaped, crumbed and held on trays until an order came in. Oscar Tschirky, who ran the dining rooms at the Waldorf from 1893, published this collection in 1896 at the height of the New York hotel's reign, by which time lobster had, by the usual account, made its climb from cheap provisioning to luxury. The seasoning here — mace, nutmeg, cayenne and bottled anchovy sauce — is more English than French, and the recipe reads as if lifted from an English household manual.