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Mock Lobster in Chafing-dish
1½ cups boiled fish, preferably salmon 1 cup stewed tomatoes well seasoned 2 tablespoonfuls cracker crumbs 1 tablespoonful butter Salt, paprika, and a little Worcestershire sauce 1 tablespoonful butter Melt the butter in the chafing-dish, add the tomatoes, fish, seasoning, and crumbs. Heat all well together.
A five-minute chafing-dish supper built on leftover cooked salmon. Everything here is already cooked, so the work is warming through without shredding the fish.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirTurn the flaked fish over gently two or three times in the hot tomato rather than stirring it in hard. Held over heat too long or worked roughly, salmon breaks down into a pink mush and the dish loses the chunky texture that makes it read as lobster.
- Butter listed twiceThe ingredient list gives 1 tablespoon butter twice, but the method melts butter only once. Use one tablespoon at the start and reserve the second to stir in off the heat for gloss, or simply use two at the start.
- Chafing-dishA tabletop pan heated by a spirit lamp beneath it, often with a hot-water pan between flame and food — gentle heat, which is why the recipe works. A small skillet or saucepan over low heat does the same job; avoid high heat.
- Stewed tomatoesAt this period this meant tomatoes cooked down with salt, pepper, sometimes onion and a little sugar. A cup of canned diced or crushed tomatoes, simmered a few minutes to thicken and seasoned, is the equivalent. Drain off watery juice first or the dish will be soupy.
- Cracker crumbsCrushed soda crackers or saltines, used as the thickener. Two tablespoons is enough to bind a thin tomato sauce; add them a little at a time, as the amount needed depends on how wet the tomatoes are.
- SeasoningPaprika and Worcestershire are doing the impersonation work — the sweet-smoky red and the savory tang. Sweet paprika, not hot, and start with half a teaspoon of Worcestershire.
- The fishBoiled fish, with salmon preferred, so any firm leftover cooked fish works. Skin and bones out, flaked in large pieces. Canned salmon is a fair substitute; drain it well.
- Yield and servingNo yield is given; the quantities suggest about two as a light supper. Buttered toast points or hot split crackers are a common accompaniment for chafing-dish mixtures of this type.
Chafing-dish cookery was at its peak in American households around 1900, promoted as elegant, informal, and suitable for late suppers a hostess could make at the table without servants. "Mock" dishes belong to the same period and the same logic: mock turtle from calf's head, mock duck from a shoulder of lamb, mock lobster from yesterday's salmon. The impersonation here is chiefly one of color and seasoning — tomato, paprika, butter, and Worcestershire supply a sweet-savory richness, and the pink flakes of salmon look the part. That the substitute cost pennies while lobster was already becoming a luxury item is the point; left-over cookery of this era treated thrift and cleverness as the same virtue.