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Shrimp Kromeskies
Divide some shelled shrimps into small pieces, put them into a clean saucepan, with a small portion of white sauce, the yolks of two or three eggs, and a little pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg. Stir the mixture over the fire for three or four minutes to set the eggs, then spread it an inch thick upon a plate, and leave it to get cold and stiff. Divide it into portions of an equal size, and form these to the shape of corks or balls. Boil half a pound of bacon for twenty minutes; let it get cold, then cut it into very thin slices of a size to cover the shrimp balls. Wrap the balls in the bacon, and, if not immediately wanted, leave them in a cool place. Dip them in frying-batter, and fry them in hot lard till they are crisp. Drain them from the fat, and serve immediately. Garnish the dish with parsley.
A Victorian croquette in disguise: a stiff shrimp custard, jacketed in bacon, battered and fried. Two things decide whether it works — how cold the shrimp mixture gets, and how thin the bacon is.
- Chill it properlyThe mixture must be genuinely cold and firm before it is shaped, or it will slump in the fryer and burst the batter. Spread it on a plate no more than an inch deep and refrigerate at least two hours, or overnight.
- The white sauce is unmeasured"A small portion" is vague, but the ratio matters: aim for roughly half a cup of thick béchamel to a pound of shelled shrimp, plus the yolks. Too much sauce and the paste never sets; too little and it tastes of egg.
- Setting the yolksThree or four minutes over a low flame, stirring constantly, is correct — the aim is a thick panade, not scrambled egg. Pull it off the heat the moment it holds a line behind the spoon.
- The baconBoiling half a pound for twenty minutes and letting it cool would have firmed it for slicing very thin, and would also have drawn out some of the salt of period cured bacon; the recipe itself gives no reason. With modern thin-cut streaky bacon you can skip the boil, but the slices must still be thin enough to wrap without cracking; a brief blanch makes them flexible.
- Frying batterThe recipe names a frying-batter but does not give one. A standard batter of flour, egg, and enough water or beer to make a coating the thickness of pouring cream will serve. Chill it and use it fresh; a slack batter will not cling to bacon fat.
- Fat temperatureThe book gives no temperature; 'hot lard' is conventionally taken today as around 350-375F. Below that the batter absorbs fat and the bacon renders greasy; above it the outside colours before the centre is hot.
- TimingThe shrimp are already cooked and the filling is set, so this is a browning operation only — two to three minutes, until the crust is crisp and deep gold. Longer and the shrimp turn to cotton.
- YieldThe recipe specifies no quantity of shrimp; a pound made up this way would give roughly sixteen cork-shaped kromeskies, enough for four as a savoury course or six as a starter. Fry in small batches so the fat does not drop below temperature.
Kromeskies (also spelled cromesquis, kromeski or kromesky) came into English cookery from Poland and Russia by way of French professional kitchens in the nineteenth century — the name is generally traced to Polish kromka, a slice, referring to the wrapper rather than the filling. What distinguishes a kromeski from an ordinary croquette is exactly that jacket: classic French practice used a thin sheet of calf's udder, and English cooks substituted boiled bacon, which does the same job of sealing the soft filling and adding fat as it fries. Batter, rather than egg and breadcrumb, is the other marker. Cassell's places the recipe among its shrimp dishes at a time when potted and boiled shrimp were cheap and ubiquitous in Britain, and when a fried savoury of this kind belonged to the small hot dishes served as an entrée or a late-dinner savoury — a way of turning a modest quantity of shellfish into something that looked like a made dish.