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Baked Lobster, Potomac
Procure three live lobsters of a pound each. Cut off the claws, split the lobsters in two and remove the gravel. Crack the claws with a cleaver and lay the half lobsters and claws on a large roasting tin. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon paprika, well divided; lightly butter the meat with a tablespoon melted butter. Set in the oven to bake for twenty minutes. Remove and dress on a large, hot dish.
Place six thin slices bacon prepared over the lobster. Decorate with six quarters lemon and a little parsley greens and send to the table with following sauce separately:
Place an ounce butter in a small frying pan and as soon as melted add two tablespoons tomato catsup, two tablespoons chili sauce and one tablespoon Worcestershire sauce; lightly mix with a wooden spoon and let boil for five minutes. Pour into a saucebowl and serve.
A straightforward hotel-kitchen preparation: split lobsters, a short blast of dry heat, and a bottled-sauce dip alongside. The original assumes a cook who knows how to break down a live lobster and a range hot enough to do the job in twenty minutes.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the book assumes a cook who judges the range by eye. Twenty minutes for a one-pound lobster suggests a hot oven, somewhere in the region of 450F; a moderate oven is unlikely to colour the shells in that time and the meat will steam rather than roast.
- "Remove the gravel"This is the stomach sac and its grit, sitting just behind the eyes, plus the dark intestinal vein running the length of the tail. Take both out. The green tomalley and any coral roe are edible and were expected to stay in.
- Pound lobstersA one-pound lobster is a "chicken" lobster, the smallest size sold. Modern markets more often start at 1 1/4 lb; if yours are larger, add about three minutes per additional quarter pound and check that the tail meat is opaque throughout.
- Splitting a live lobsterThe usual method is to drive a heavy knife straight down through the head behind the eyes before splitting lengthwise; this is the quickest despatch, though a lobster's nervous system is distributed and the kill is not necessarily instantaneous. Chilling the lobster in the freezer for fifteen minutes beforehand is often recommended to make it inert.
- "Bacon prepared"Cooked bacon, drained. It is laid over the lobster at the last moment as a garnish, not baked with it, so fry it while the lobsters are in the oven.
- Chili sauceThe period condiment, a sweet-sour tomato relish in the Heinz mould, not a hot pepper sauce. Substituting sriracha or sambal will throw the sauce badly out of balance.
- The sauceButter, catsup, chili sauce and Worcestershire, boiled for the five minutes directed, will thicken somewhat. Sugary tomato condiments scorch fast in butter, so stir throughout.
- YieldSix half lobsters, six lemon quarters and six slices of bacon: it is built for six as a first course, or three as a main.
The International Cook Book belongs to the era of the grand American hotel and restaurant kitchen, where dishes were routinely tagged with a place name to distinguish one treatment from another on a long menu -- Lobster Newburg, a la Bordelaise, Potomac. What the Potomac label refers to is not explained, and no particular local connection can be read into it from the recipe. What dates the dish is the sauce: catsup, chili sauce and Worcestershire, three bottled products that were cheap and widely available by the turn of the twentieth century, warmed in butter and sent to table as a "sauce" in its own right, with no stock or reduction behind it.