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SHRIMP PUDDING (for breakfast or luncheon)
Take freshly-boiled shrimps, shell them, put them into a pie-dish, and season according to the directions given for SHRIMPS, POTTED WHOLE, allowing an ounce and a half of butter for a pint of shrimps. Bake in a slow oven till the butter is melted; then let the shrimps get cold, mince them with a sharp knife, and pound them to a smooth paste with the butter in which they were baked. Press them into very small cups, and when wanted heat them in a gentle oven; turn them out upon a dish, and pour rich white sauce round them. If liked, the sauce can be coloured brightly with lobster coral.
A potted-shrimp paste moulded into little cups and served hot with sauce. The whole dish depends on the shrimp being pounded smooth while the spiced butter is still soft enough to bind it.
- A pint of shrimpsShrimps were commonly sold and measured by the pint. A pint of small peeled shrimp is very roughly 8 to 10 oz by weight, so the butter works out at about 1 1/2 oz (3 tablespoons) to that quantity. The original assumes small brown or pink shrimp, not large prawns; anything bigger should be chopped down before pounding.
- The seasoning being referred toThe reader is sent to the book's own entry for shrimps potted whole, which is not reproduced here. Potted shrimp seasoning of the period is typically salt, cayenne and ground mace, sometimes with a little grated nutmeg. Mace is the characteristic flavour.
- A slow ovenThe book gives no temperatures; a slow oven is conventionally taken as around 300F/150C. The first baking is only to melt the butter through the shrimp and carry the spice into it, not to cook them further — they are already boiled. Ten to fifteen minutes should be enough.
- Pound while the fat is workableThe instruction to cool the shrimp before mincing is about texture, not safety: cold shrimp mince cleanly instead of shredding. The recipe does say to let them get cold, so the butter will have set; let it come back to a workable softness before pounding or the paste will not bind. A food processor does the work of the mortar in under a minute; stop before it turns to a slurry.
- Very small cupsDariole moulds or 2 oz ramekins, buttered. Press the paste in firmly to eliminate air pockets or the moulds will not turn out cleanly. Chilling them until firm before reheating helps them hold shape.
- A gentle oven for reheatingAgain no temperature is given in the original; around 300F/150C, and no longer than needed to warm through. Hotter and the butter runs out, leaving a dry, grainy shrimp cake in a pool of fat.
- Rich white sauceA béchamel made with cream, or with the shrimp shells simmered in the milk first and strained. Keep it thin enough to pour and flood the plate rather than coat it.
- Lobster coralThe roe of a hen lobster, which turns coral-red on cooking and was dried and sieved for use as a pink colouring. It is not generally sold separately today. A little tomato paste or a pinch of sweet paprika bloomed in butter gives the colour without the flavour; omitting it costs the dish nothing.
- YieldA pint of shrimp fills six to eight small moulds — one or two each as a breakfast or light luncheon course.
Potted shrimp is one of the oldest surviving English preserves: small shrimp cooked, packed tight with spiced butter and sealed under a layer of clarified fat, which kept them edible for days without ice and is often credited with helping the Lancashire and Norfolk shrimp fisheries reach markets well beyond their own coasts. This recipe is the potted paste repurposed as a hot dish, which is very much the logic of Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery ellingly, sending the reader to the potting entry for the seasoning rather than repeating it. The result belongs to the late-Victorian breakfast and luncheon table, where a small savoury moulded thing served with a sauce was a familiar sight. Mace and nutmeg with shellfish is a much older pairing, generally traced to the seventeenth-century English kitchen, and it survived in potted fish long after it had dropped out of most other savoury cooking.