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Prawns, Shrimps, or Crayfish, Potted
Boil them in water with plenty of salt in it. When you have picked them, powder them with a little beaten mace, or grated nutmeg, or all-spice, and pepper and salt; add a little cold butter, and pound all well together in a marble mortar till of the consistency of paste. Put it into pots, pour clarified butter on top, and cover the vessels over with wetted bladder.
A working method rather than a formula: no quantities, no timings, and a sealing technique that has no modern equivalent. The proportions and the storage are where it needs help.
- The hinge: cold butter, pounded not meltedThe butter must be cold and worked into the shellfish so the mixture emulsifies into a paste. Melted butter beaten in will split as it sets and leave a greasy, grainy pot.
- ProportionsReckon on 2-3 oz (60-85 g) of butter to 8 oz (225 g) of picked shellfish, plus about a quarter teaspoon of ground mace and a good pinch each of salt and pepper. Eight ounces of picked meat fills two small ramekins and serves four as a starter.
- BoilingPrawns and shrimps want 1-3 minutes in heavily salted water depending on size, crayfish 5-8 minutes. The instruction gives no time at all; overcooked shellfish pounds into a woolly paste.
- Mortar or machineA food processor does in twenty seconds what the marble mortar did in ten minutes. Pulse rather than run it, and stop while there is still some texture unless you want a smooth potted paste.
- Mace and allspiceBlade mace, the lacy outer covering of nutmeg, is the classic seasoning for potted shrimp and is milder and warmer than nutmeg itself. Ground mace from a jar loses its scent quickly; buy it in small quantities. "All-spice" here is the pimento berry, not a mixed spice blend.
- Clarified butterMelt butter gently, let the milk solids settle, and pour off the clear fat only. The solids are what turns a butter seal cloudy and sour; the clear fat sets hard and airtight.
- Wetted bladderA softened pig's bladder was tied over the pot and shrank tight as it dried, giving a rigid seal. Baking parchment tied with string does the same job cosmetically; a lid or plastic wrap does it better.
- Storage, which is the real differenceThe butter seal was designed to keep potted fish in a cold larder for weeks. Do not treat it that way: sealed shellfish under fat is an oxygen-free environment, so refrigerate the pots at once and eat within three days. Serve at cool room temperature, with brown toast, after letting the butter soften for twenty minutes.
- CrayfishThe native white-clawed crayfish is a protected species in Britain and must not be taken. Farmed signal crayfish and imported crayfish tails are what is legitimately available; trapping signal crayfish requires a licence.
Potting is the English answer to French confit: a cooked food packed into a pot and sealed under a layer of fat that keeps air out, used through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for everything from beef and venison to lampreys and char. Shellfish took to it particularly well, and potted shrimp survived the arrival of refrigeration when potted meats largely did not, chiefly through the small brown shrimp of Morecambe Bay, which are still boiled, picked and set in spiced butter as a regional speciality. Mace as the dominant spice is a long-standing convention rather than a modern choice, and it recurs in potting recipes across two centuries of English cookery books.