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Toasted Lobster, Mrs. Potter
Plunge two live lobsters of one and a half pounds each in one and a half gallons of boiling water, with a tablespoon of salt, and boil for twenty minutes. Remove and let cool off. Carefully crack all the shells, claws and tails, then with a fork pick out all the meat. Finely chop all the meat up, and place it in a bowl. Season with half teaspoon salt, a saltspoon cayenne pepper and a teaspoon French mustard, adding half a bean finely chopped, sound garlic, half teaspoon finely chopped parsley, half teaspoon finely chopped chervil and one raw egg. Sharply mix the whole together for two minutes with a wooden spoon. Then evenly spread the mixture over six lightly buttered toasts a quarter of an inch thick and two and a half inches square. Heat in a small saucepan one ounce of melted butter, add four medium, peeled and thoroughly washed, dried and finely chopped mushrooms, and slowly cook them for five minutes, then mix in two tablespoons flour and gently stir while heating for one minute. Pour in one gill hot milk and one gill cold cream. Season with two saltspoons salt, a saltspoon paprika and half a saltspoon ground nutmeg. Sharply mix with a whisk for half minute, add one egg yolk, immediately stir for half minute more, then carefully spread the cream sauce evenly over the lobster of the six toasts. Dredge a tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese over them, equally divided, and place on a tin, set in oven to bake for ten minutes, or until a nice golden colour. Remove from the oven, dress the toasts on a hot dish with a folded napkin over it, nicely decorate with parsley greens and serve.
A Delmonico's-style savoury on toast, straightforward once the period vocabulary is decoded. The recipe never states an oven temperature and its boiling time is far too long.
- Cut the boilTwenty minutes will overcook a pair of 1½ lb lobsters into cotton. Ten to twelve minutes at a hard boil is enough for that size; the meat is then still firm and sweet when it goes back into the oven for a second cooking.
- "Half a bean, sound garlic""Half a bean finely chopped, sound garlic" -- almost certainly a literal rendering of the French gousse, which covers both a pod and a clove: half a clove of garlic, chosen sound rather than sprouted or soft. Not a legume.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is a scant ¼ teaspoon. A gill is half a cup, so the sauce takes ½ cup hot milk and ½ cup cold cream.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the book leaves oven heat to the cook's judgement throughout. For a ten-minute bake that colours the Parmesan, a hot oven of around 425F works.
- The sauce is a small béchamelOne ounce butter, two tablespoons flour and a cup of liquid gives a medium sauce that thickens further with the egg yolk, enough to sit on the lobster rather than run off the toast. Add the milk and cream gradually and whisk out lumps before the egg yolk goes in, and keep the pan off a hard boil once it does.
- French mustardA smooth prepared mustard in the French style, of the Dijon type, rather than a grainy or American-style one. A teaspoon is doing real seasoning work here against the sweetness of the lobster.
- Toast dimensionsQuarter-inch slices cut to 2½-inch squares imply a firm white loaf with the crusts trimmed off. Toast them dry and butter lightly; softly toasted bread collapses under the filling and sauce.
- YieldSix toasts, which is a first course for six or a light supper for three. Chervil is worth seeking out fresh, but the dish survives on parsley alone.
Filippini's International Cook Book came from a chef who described himself as formerly of Delmonico's in New York, where naming a dish after a patron or a colleague and letting the name stand as its recipe title is well documented for the restaurant's circle, with "Mrs." attributions running through the book, most of which now identify nobody in particular. The dish itself is a hot savoury in the late-nineteenth-century restaurant manner: shellfish chopped, seasoned sharply with cayenne and mustard, bound with raw egg, spread on trimmed toast, masked with a cream sauce and glazed under a dusting of Parmesan. The same construction turns up as lobster or crab canapés, and as a way of using shellfish already cooked. Serving it on a hot dish under a folded napkin, garnished with parsley, is standard period plating, though the reason often given for the napkin — that it absorbed condensation and kept the toasts from going soggy on the way to the table — is a later gloss rather than an attested period explanation.