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Cronstades of Lobster Cream
Prepare some cronstades as directed, and having them well warmed, fill them with mixture prepared in this way: warmed , fill them with mixture prepared in this way:
Cut the meat from a two-pound lobster into small dice, place in a sauce-pan with a teaspoonful of salt, a dash of cayenne, and a very little nutmeg (better without nutmeg).
Moisten with two ounces of butter and a half pint of cream.
After filling the cronstades, place on top of each a slice of lemon. Serve very hot.
A rich lobster cream spooned into fried bread cases. The original assumes you already know how to make croustades and gives no cooking time for the filling, so the two things worth getting right are the vessel and the heat.
- What a cronstade isA variant spelling of croustade: a case of bread (or occasionally pastry) hollowed out, brushed or dipped in butter, and fried or baked crisp. The recipe gives no directions of its own ("as directed" points elsewhere in the book). To make them: cut rounds or squares from a day-old firm loaf about 2 inches deep, hollow the centres leaving a quarter-inch wall, and crisp them in a hot oven until golden. They should be warm and dry when filled, or they collapse.
- The measuresHalf a pint of cream is one US cup; two ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons. Use heavy cream — anything lighter will not thicken and is more likely to break when heated.
- Yield of a two-pound lobsterA whole two-pound lobster gives roughly 6 to 8 ounces of picked meat, enough for six to eight small croustades. The recipe does not say to cook the lobster, so it appears to assume meat from an already-boiled one.
- The hinge: barely heat the lobsterAlready-cooked lobster needs only to come up to temperature in the cream, two to three minutes over low heat. Held at a simmer it turns fibrous and squeaky, and the cream will break. Reduce the cream and butter first if you want it thicker, then fold the lobster in at the end.
- There is no thickenerAs written this is butter and cream alone, so it will be loose and will soak the bread if it stands. Either reduce the cream by about a third before adding the lobster, or bind it with a teaspoon of flour cooked in the butter. Fill the cases at the moment of serving.
- Season with a lighter handA full teaspoon of salt is a great deal for one cup of cream and half a pound of meat — start with a quarter teaspoon and correct. The author's own parenthesis about the nutmeg is good advice; it fights the lobster.
- ServingSix to eight as a hot hors d'oeuvre, three or four as a light lunch course. The lemon slice on top is presumably there to be squeezed over the filling.
Croustades belong to the late-Victorian and Edwardian taste for serving rich fillings in an edible container — timbales, patty shells, vol-au-vents, scooped bread cases — a fashion that let a household stretch a small quantity of an expensive ingredient across a whole table. Lobster was a showpiece of that kind of cookery in America, more affordable on the Atlantic coast than inland yet still reading as luxury once creamed and cayenned.