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Broiled Lobster, Butter Sauce
Thoroughly wipe three live lobsters of one pound each, cut off all the claws and split the bodies in two. Crack the claws with a cleaver, place them on a roasting tin and set to bake in oven for twenty minutes. Remove the stony pouch from the heads. Arrange on a double broiler, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon paprika, and broil with the cut parts upward for ten minutes, then set in a brisk oven for ten minutes. Remove, dress the bodies and claws on a large dish, decorate with six quarters lemon and a little parsley greens and serve with a little melted butter separately.
A straightforward split-and-broil treatment, but the timings assume a coal range and lobsters far smaller than most fishmongers now sell. Read the whole thing before you start, because the claws go in first.
- The one thing that mattersTotal heat here runs to twenty minutes for the split bodies, which will dry a one-pound lobster to cotton. Broil cut-side up until the shell is red and the tail meat is just opaque, then finish only long enough to heat through — around 135-140F at the thickest part of the tail.
- "Stony pouch"The gritty stomach sac behind the eyes. Lift it out with a spoon once the body is split, along with the dark intestinal line running down the tail. The green tomalley and any coral roe are left in and are the best part.
- Splitting a live lobsterDrive the knife tip straight down through the cross-shaped mark on the back of the head, then cut forward through the shell and back through the tail. Cooks uneasy about this can chill the lobster in the freezer for fifteen minutes first, or parboil for a minute or two, which also loosens the claws.
- Oven temperatures"Brisk" is generally taken to mean a hot oven, somewhere in the 400-450F range. The recipe gives no temperature for the claws, only twenty minutes' baking; they carry more shell and less exposed flesh than the split bodies.
- Double broilerA hinged wire grill of two grates that clamps the food between them, used over an open fire so the whole thing can be turned. A rimmed sheet pan under a modern overhead broiler, or a hot grill, does the same work; nothing needs turning if the cut side faces the heat.
- SizingOne-pound "chicken" lobsters were a common market size in the period, and smaller than much of what is sold today. At 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb each, allow a few extra minutes on the claws and keep the same visual cue for the bodies.
- Butter sauceHere nothing more than melted butter served in a separate boat, as the recipe states. Clarifying it keeps the milk solids from settling.
- YieldThree lobsters, three servings as a main course with the halves and claws dressed on one platter. Six as a first course.
The International Cook Book belongs to an era often described as one when American lobster was cheaper and more plentiful than it later became, though by the turn of the century the fishery was already under pressure and prices were climbing.