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Broiled and Baked Lobsters
Lobsters which are to be broiled or baked, are killed by cutting them into halves; the stomach and long intestine are then removed, the lobster basted with melted butter, dusted slightly with salt and pepper, and, if baked, placed in a very hot oven for half an hour, basting frequently. If broiled, arrange in a broiler, sear quickly the flesh side and broil, shell side down, at an elevation of six inches over a perfectly clear coal fire for about thirty minutes, or, if underneath a gas stove, with the flesh side up, basting four or five times while broiling. Serve immediately with melted butter sauce.
A sound method buried under a Victorian sense of time: thirty minutes will turn a split lobster into rubber. Everything else here — the split, the basting, the shell-side-down broil — is still how it is done.
- Timing is the hingeA 1 to 1½ lb lobster split and broiled needs roughly 8-12 minutes total, and a baked one about the same in a hot oven. The tail meat is done when it turns opaque and firms up; thirty minutes gives you the texture of an eraser. Larger lobsters and the uncertain heat of a coal fire may account for part of the length, though the recipe itself specifies neither.
- "A very hot oven"Take this as 450-475F. Modern practice for baked split lobster runs a little hotter and much shorter than the original allows.
- Killing and splittingThe instruction to kill by cutting into halves means splitting the live lobster lengthwise through the head with a heavy knife, working from the point behind the eyes toward the tail. Many cooks now chill the lobster in the freezer for 15-20 minutes first, or plunge it into boiling water for 60 seconds, which makes the job less lively.
- What to removeThe "stomach" is the gritty sac just behind the eyes; the "long intestine" is the dark vein running the length of the tail. Keep the green tomalley and any coral (red roe) if you want them — both were prized in this period and still are.
- Six inches from the fireUnder a modern broiler, set the rack so the lobster meat sits 5-6 inches from the element, flesh side up, and do not turn it. The shell insulates from below while the butter browns the surface.
- BastingFour or five bastings over ten minutes is a lot of opening and closing. Brush generously with melted butter before it goes in and once again midway; the point is to keep the exposed tail meat from drying, not to build a glaze.
- YieldOne split lobster per person for a main course. A 1½ lb lobster yields roughly 6 oz of picked meat.
Broiled lobster belongs to a particular American moment. Through the nineteenth century the Northeast fishery moved from a glut so cheap that lobster was, by a much-repeated tradition, fed to prisoners and servants to a fashionable restaurant item, largely because canning and then live shipment by rail carried it inland and gave it scarcity value. Cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s, this one included, treat lobster as a course requiring instruction — how to kill it, what to discard, what "very hot" means — which suggests a readership meeting the whole animal rather than a can. The long cooking times may reflect both the sizes then landed, which are often said to have run well over two pounds, and what is generally taken to have been a period preference for fish and shellfish cooked thoroughly; the short, hot handling now standard came later, along with a reliable oven thermometer.