Crazy Antique Recipes: 1840 Lobster Catchup

 

1840 Lobster Catchup

Directions for Cookery, In Its Various Brances

Miss Leslie

3 lb lobster

1 tsp cayenne

Sherry wine

1 dessert-spoonful whole pepper (per bottle)

This catchup, warmed in melted butter, is an excellent substitute for fresh lobster sauce at seasons when the fish cannot he procured, as, if properly made, it will keep a year. Take a fine lobster that weighs about three pounds. Put it into boiling water, and cook it thoroughly. When it is cold break it up, and extract all the flesh from the shell. Pound the red part or coral in a marble mortar, and when it is well bruised, add the white meat by degrees, and pound that also; seasoning it with a tea-spoonful of cayenne, and moistening it gradually with sherry wine. When it is beaten to a smooth paste, mix it well with the remainder of the bottle of sherry. Put it into wide-mouthed bottles, and on the top of each lay a dessert-spoonful of whole pepper. Dip the corks in melted rosin, and secure them well by tying leather over them. In using this catchup allow four table-spoonfuls to a common-sized sauce-boat of melted butter. Put in the catchup at the last, and hold it over the fire just long enough to be thoroughly heated.