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Stuffed Devilled Lobster
Prepare a lobster forcemeat. Cut the shells of the three lobsters saved from Sunday, into equal halves, lengthwise; lightly trim all around with scissors, carefully seeing that they are thoroughly clean. Divide the force in the six shells equally, lightly smooth the surface with the blade of a knife. Evenly spread a devilled butter over them, lightly roll in bread crumbs, place on a tin, and arrange a few little bits of butter on top. Set in oven to bake for fifteen minutes, remove, dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin, decorate with six quarters of lemon and a little parsley greens and serve.
This is a leftovers dish from a book built around a fixed calendar of menus, so it assumes you already have cooked lobster, a forcemeat and a devilled butter on hand. Two of its three components are cross-references, which is the first thing to sort out.
- The missing components"Lobster forcemeat" here means the picked lobster meat chopped and bound — commonly with a thick white sauce or panada, egg and seasoning — into a mixture stiff enough to mound in the shell. "Devilled butter" is generally softened butter worked with mustard and cayenne, sometimes with Worcestershire or anchovy. Neither is specified on this page; you supply both.
- Everything is already cookedThe lobster was cooked on Sunday, so the fifteen minutes in the oven is largely to set the forcemeat, heat it through and colour the crumbs. The forcemeat itself, however, is made fresh here ("Prepare a lobster forcemeat"), so if it is bound with raw egg it must be cooked through, not merely warmed.
- Oven heatThe original gives none. A hot oven, roughly 400–425F, will brown crumbs and butter in about the stated fifteen minutes; at a moderate 350F the surface is likely to take colour slowly, with more risk of the forcemeat drying.
- Preparing the shellsSplit the body shells lengthwise, discard the tomalley sac and gills, scrub and dry them. Trimming the ragged edges with scissors is cosmetic but genuinely worth doing — the shells are the serving vessel and a clean rim makes the piped or smoothed filling look deliberate.
- Crumbs and butterRoll the buttered surface in dry fine crumbs, not fresh soft ones, or they will absorb the butter and go pasty. The extra bits of butter dotted on top are what carry the browning; leave them out and the crumbs stay pale.
- The folded napkinDressing the shells on a folded napkin on a hot platter was standard service practice: it stops the pieces sliding and absorbs any butter that runs. Purely presentational, and easily skipped.
- YieldSix filled half-shells from three lobsters — a first course for six, or a light main for three.
- Keeping cooked shellfishThe recipe assumes a Sunday-to-midweek turnaround. Cooked lobster meat should be refrigerated below 40F and used within about two days; if the meat smells of ammonia, it is past use and no amount of devilled butter will disguise it.
Devilling — dressing something with mustard, cayenne and other hot seasonings before browning it — is an English kitchen habit that appears in print from the late eighteenth century onward, and it offered one way of reviving cooked meat, fish or shellfish for a second appearance at the table. That is exactly what is happening here: the instruction to use "the three lobsters saved from Sunday" points back to the structure of this book, which is laid out as a year of dated menus rather than as a list of independent dishes, so a recipe can assume both a leftover and a forcemeat prepared earlier in the week. Serving the mixture back in the split shell follows the same logic that gives us stuffed clams and coquilles; the shell cost nothing and held its shape in the oven.