Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

• a moderate-sized lobster
• twice the quantity of butter
• a good pinch of cayenne pepper
• about a dessert-spoonful of the cut-up meat
• about half a salt-spoonful of anchovy sauce
• the same quantity of lemon-juice
• half a pint of melted butter

Method

1. 1

   Cut open the lobster and remove the meat, placing it in a cool place.

2. 2

   Pound the spawn and coral with butter and cayenne to make lobster butter.

3. 3

   For the sauce, make thin melted butter using milk, add lobster butter for color, then mix in the lobster meat, anchovy sauce, and lemon juice.

4. 4

   Adjust the melted butter quantity based on the ladle size.

Nutrition per serving

As published

This recipe was extracted from Practical home cookery (1906) by A. G. Payne, page 7. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

lobster sauce, and contrast it as it is with what it ought to be, trust- ing that our description of the latter will be attended with the practical result of enabling those who read it to make it for themselves, should they so desire, besides something in addition. First, we all know the lobster sauce which too often is handed round as an accompaniment to some boiled fish, such as turbot or brill. It consists simply of melted butter, with small pieces of lobster — some white, some pink — cut up in it ; but as to the hquid sauce itself, it does not contain even the slightest flavour of lobster whatever. On the other hand, good lobster sauce is of a bright red colour, and tasting so strongly of lobster that it is too often apt to overpower the flavour of the fish entirely. Yet this latter has probably been made out of exactly the same materials as the former. What, then, is the difference ? Simply this : In the one case all the flavour of the lobster has been extracted, and in the other it has not. Cutting up the meat of a lobster and putting the pieces into melted butter is no more making lobster sauce than cutting up a calf’s head and throwing the pieces into boding -water would be making mock-turtle soup. We will suppose, now, the very ordinary case of some lobster sauce being required for a small party, KITCHEN ECONOMY. 21 say eight persons ; the ordinary method being for a lobster to be ordered, the white part of the meat cut up and put into some melted butter, while the pickings, so called, generally make a tit-bit at the kitchen supper, with the usual accompaniment of at least a pint of vinegar. Now, what is the difficulty ? First, even a small lobster is amply sufficient to supply sauce for double the number. Everyone who has eyes, and knows how to use them, must have observed how in- variably it is the case that in small households fish sauce of any description is always made in gigantic proportions. We have seen melted butter of the con- sistency of a pudding brought up for four persons, in quantity sufficient for the table d'hote at the Grand Hotel in Paris. Make up your mind, therefore, as follows : — Order a moderate-sized lobster, and have a dish of lobster cutlets as an entree in addition to the sauce for the fish. Now, there are few prettier dishes than lobster cutlets, and few easier to make, yet how rarely is it met with in small households ! First, get a lobster containing some spawn and coral. Cut open the lobster and remove the whole of the meat, including that in the claws, and cut it up into small pieces, and put it on a plate and place it in a cool place, to be used as we shall explain by-and-by. Next take the spawn and coral and place it in a mortar with about twice the quantity of butter, and pound it well together, adding a good pinch of cayenne pepper. You will by this means obtain what is called lobster butter, and without it it is impossible to make either good lobster sauce, or patties, or cutlets, or bisque — the latter being, in other words, lobster soup. This lobster butter has a strong lobster flavour, and is of an exceedingly brilliant colour. It will keep a long time, and good cooks should always try to 22 PRACTICAL HOME COOKERY. have some by them, as ofttimes lobsters contain neither spawn or coral. Scrape all the lobster butter out of the mortar, and place it in some small jar for use. Next (we are supposing that eight persons are the number at dinner), take about a dessert-spoonful of the cut-up meat and put it by for the sauce — this quantity will be amply sufficient — and take all the rest of the meat and place it in a mortar, and pound it up with the following materials, previously chopped very fine : a piece of onion as big as the top of the thumb down to the bottom of the nail, a small tea-spoonful of chopped parsley, and a piece of lemon-peel the size and thick- ness of the thumb-nail. But while these are being pounded, let us return to and finish making the lobster sauce. First, make a little rather thin melted butter, using milk instead of water ; add sufficient lobster butter to make it a bright red colour, this lobster butter containing as a rule sufficient cayenne pepper for the whole sauce. Add the dessert-spoonful of lobster meat, about half a salt -spoonful of anchovy sauce, and the same quantity of lemon-juice

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.