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Lobster Saute in Cream
Plunge three live lobsters of one pound each into a gallon boiling water with a tablespoon salt for twenty minutes. Remove and let cool off. Crack the shells from the bodies and claws, pick out all the meat you can and cut the meat into half-inch pieces. Heat two tablespoons butter in a frying pan, add the lobster, season with a teaspoon salt, two saltspoons paprika and a saltspoon grated nutmeg; then cook the lobster for ten minutes, occasionally stirring meanwhile. Besprinkle with two tablespoons flour, stir well for a minute, pour in two tablespoons sherry, one and a half gills cream and half gill milk. Carefully mix with a wooden spoon, slowly cook for ten minutes, pour into a deep hot dish and serve.
N. B. Thoroughly clean the body shells and save for Wednesday luncheon.
A straightforward cream saute, but the original's timings are generous by modern standards and the measures are pre-metric American household units.
- Cut the boiling timeTwenty minutes for one-pound lobsters is far too long, especially since the meat is then cooked twice more in the pan. Eight to ten minutes in the boiling salted water is enough for a one-pounder; the meat should be just set and opaque.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of cream is 3/4 cup and half a gill of milk is 1/4 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, giving 1/2 teaspoon paprika and 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg.
- The pan stageTen minutes of buttered lobster in a hot frying pan will toughen it. Two or three minutes over medium heat, just to warm the meat and bloom the paprika, then flour, sherry and dairy.
- Reduce, don't boilThe finishing ten minutes is for thickening, not cooking. Keep the cream at a bare simmer; a hard boil will break it and squeeze the lobster meat further.
- SherryUse a dry or medium sherry such as fino or amontillado, not the salted "cooking sherry" sold today. Let it bubble down for a few seconds before the cream goes in.
- Buying live lobstersThree one-pound lobsters yield something like 10 to 12 ounces of picked meat. If you buy cooked lobster or good frozen tail and claw meat instead, skip the boiling entirely and add it at the pan stage.
- YieldThe quantities are modest: about four as a first course, or two to three as a main. Toast points, rice or plain boiled potatoes carry the sauce.
- The saved shellsThe note about Wednesday luncheon points to a stuffed-shell dish; scrubbed body shells also make a good quick stock for bisque. Discard the shells if they will not be used within a day.
This is the sort of dish that made lobster respectable at the turn of the twentieth century: a hotel-kitchen preparation in the Newburg family, where picked meat is warmed in butter, bound with a little flour, and finished with sherry, cream and a grating of nutmeg. The direction to save the cleaned body shells for a later meal shows those kitchens' habit of planning several days at once.