Home › The Principles of Cookery › PRAWNS (a la Mantalini)
PRAWNS (a la Mantalini)
Mince together finely one pint of picked prawns, a tomato, and half a pound of mushrooms. Put them into a saucepan with three ounces of butter, a dash of cayenne, and the juice of a lemon. Let this come to a boil, and serve on hot toast with a slice of lemon.
A quick savoury of the kind Cassell's files under toast dishes and light suppers. The whole thing takes about fifteen minutes, and the only real risk is overcooking shellfish that was already cooked before it reached the pan.
- "Picked prawns"Picked means boiled, shelled and cleaned; prawns were commonly sold ready boiled in Britain at this date, so the nearest modern equivalent is cooked and peeled cold-water prawns. A pint here is a volume, not a weight, and what it weighs depends on how tightly the prawns are packed, so treat any conversion to ounces or grams as rough.
- The hinge: barely heat them"Let this come to a boil" applies to a mixture that is already cooked through. Bring it just to the point of bubbling and take it off; prawns held at a boil for even a few minutes turn tight and cottony.
- Deal with the mushroom water firstHalf a pound of minced mushrooms will throw a great deal of liquid. Cook them in the butter on their own until the pan is dry and they begin to colour, then add the prawns, tomato, cayenne and lemon at the end, or you will be spooning soup onto the toast.
- The tomatoA single tomato of this period was likely smaller than a modern supermarket one, though sizes varied. Skin and seed it before mincing, or the skins will roll up into curls in the finished mixture.
- Butter quantityThree ounces is 85 g — generous by modern habit but structural here, since it is the only thing binding the mince. Reducing it much below two ounces gives a dry, crumbly heap.
- Cayenne and lemon"A dash" is nowhere defined; read it as a pinch, with the pepper meant to be felt but not identified. A whole lemon's juice into this quantity is sharp -- add half, taste, then finish.
- Yield and servingEnough for four small rounds of toast as a savoury or first course, or two as a light lunch. Cut the toast after buttering, serve at once, and put the lemon slice on the plate rather than the mixture.
The name is a joke, not a place: Mr Mantalini is the preening, sponging husband of the dressmaker Madame Mantalini in Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, which appeared in the general vicinity of the turn of the twentieth century, is thick with these little pounded-and-buttered mixtures served on toast — the savoury course that closed an English dinner after the sweet, a course that had no real counterpart in French service and that British cooks defended as a national peculiarity. Prawns for such dishes came ready boiled and picked from the fishmonger, which is why the recipe assumes no cooking of the shellfish at all.