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Lobster Cutlets Served with Sauce
Put half pint of milk over the fire. Rub together one tablespoonful of butter and two tablespoonfuls of flour; add to the milk, stir until smooth and thick; take from the fire, add the yolks of two eggs and cook a moment longer, take again from the fire, and add one pint of finely chopped boiled lobster, a level teaspoonful of salt, ten drops of onion juice, a tablespoonful of chopped parsley, a dash of cayenne, and an eighth of a teaspoonful of white pepper; mix all together carefully, cool; when cold form into cutlet-shaped croquettes; dip first in beaten egg then in bread crumbs, and fry in smoking-hot fat. As all the materials have been previously cooked, two minutes will be quite enough for the frying. When done drain on brown paper. Put one of the small claws in the end to represent a chop bone, garnish with parsley, or cress, and serve with cream sauce or sauce tartare.
A standard croquette panada — a very stiff béchamel bound with yolks — carrying a pint of picked lobster. The hinge is temperature: the mixture must be thoroughly cold and firm before shaping, or the cutlets slump and burst in the fat.
- Half pint of milkOne cup. With a tablespoon of butter and two of flour, this gives a paste stiff enough to hold chopped meat; it will look alarmingly thick, which is correct.
- A pint of lobsterMeasured by volume, not weight: about 2 cups of finely chopped cooked meat, on the order of three-quarters of a pound to a pound picked. Since picked meat runs only about a quarter of a lobster's live weight, that means several small lobsters or one large one. Frozen or good-quality canned lobster works, though the small claws for the garnish will be missing.
- Onion juiceGrate a peeled onion on a fine grater and use the liquid that collects, or press a cut half against the grater and squeeze. Ten drops is a whisper of flavour, not an onion note; grated onion pulp substituted directly makes the mixture wet.
- Cool, and mean itSpread the mixture in a shallow pan, press plastic wrap on the surface and refrigerate at least three hours or overnight. Warm or barely cool paste cannot be shaped and will disintegrate in the fryer.
- Smoking-hot fatIn modern terms, somewhere around 375F; the book gives no figure, only 'smoking-hot.' Much hotter and the crumb colours before the interior warms; cooler and the coating absorbs fat. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
- Two minutesThe original is right, and the reason it gives is the right one — everything inside is already cooked, so you are only setting the crust and heating through. Longer frying dries the lobster and splits the shells of crumb.
- Drain on brown paperPaper towels or a wire rack over a sheet pan. A rack keeps the underside crisp; paper flat on a plate softens it.
- Yield and servingAbout eight to ten cutlets, enough for four as a first course or a light supper. Cream sauce here means a plain white sauce loosened with cream; sauce tartare is the mayonnaise-based one with capers, gherkins and herbs.
The cutlet-shaped croquette was a fixture of turn-of-the-century American dinner tables, and its whole point was mimicry: a bound mixture of chopped meat or fish was pressed into the outline of a lamb chop, and a small claw or a trimmed bone stuck in the narrow end to complete the illusion. That kind of playful presentation came out of professional French service and filtered into domestic manuals through cooking-school teachers like Sarah Tyson Rorer and Fannie Farmer, whose books drilled home the panada method — butter and flour cooked with milk, enriched with yolks, cooled solid, then shaped, crumbed and fried. Lobster was an obvious candidate: expensive enough to feel like a company dish, but stretched here by a cup of sauce into eight or ten cutlets.