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Shrimp Sauce, for Trout, Turbot, Soles, Salmon, Etc
No. 1.--Work two ounces of butter--or more or less, according to taste--and a table-spoonful of flour to a smooth paste with a wooden spoon. Add a cupful of boiling water and a little pepper and grated nutmeg, and stir the sauce on the fire till it is on the point of boiling. Take it off the fire, add a tea-spoonful of lemon-juice, a pinch of cayenne, and salt to taste. Throw in a third of a pint of shrimps freed from the shells; let them heat three or four minutes in the sauce on the fire till they are tender, but on no account let them boil, as it will make them hard. Serve in a boat. If liked, an ounce of shrimp butter (see SHRIMP BUTTER) may be dissolved in the sauce, or a tea-spoonful of anchovy essence may be added to it. No. 2.--Take a cupful of melted butter, made partly of milk and partly of water. Stir into it a pinch of cayenne, a pinch of pounded mace, and a quarter of a pint of freshly-picked shrimps. Let them heat over the fire for three or four minutes, without boiling, and serve immediately. A little cream makes a delicate addition. Time, three minutes to simmer the sauce. Probable cost, shrimps, 2d. to 4d. per pint. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A plain flour-and-butter sauce carrying cooked shrimps, meant for boiled or poached fish. Two versions are given; the first is a small roux sauce, the second a Victorian "melted butter" base.
- Never let the shrimps boilThis is the hinge, and the recipe says it twice. The shrimps are already cooked; three or four minutes at a bare simmer only warms them through. A boil tightens the protein and turns them rubbery.
- "Melted butter" is a sauce, not butterIn No. 2 it means the standard Victorian white sauce: butter thickened with flour and thinned with milk and water, roughly what No. 1 produces. It is not simply butter melted in a pan.
- QuantitiesA cupful here is about 8 fl oz. A third of a pint and a quarter of a pint of picked shrimps are volume measures, and shelled shrimps weigh well under water for the same volume, so treat any weight conversion as approximate. The 2 oz butter to one tablespoon flour is butter-heavy by modern habit; more flour or less butter gives a cleaner sauce.
- The shrimps intendedThese are small brown or pink North Sea shrimps, sold cooked in the shell and picked by hand. Cooked cold-water shrimp or small cooked prawns stand in; cut larger prawns down so the sauce is not all lumps.
- Shrimp butter and anchovy essenceShrimp butter is shrimp pounded with butter and sieved; the book carries its own entry, cross-referenced here. Anchovy essence is a thin salty anchovy extract; a teaspoon of anchovy paste or a mashed fillet does the same job. Salt at the very end if you use either.
- MacePounded mace is the outer covering of nutmeg, warmer and less sweet than the seed. Ground mace from a jar is fine, and a scrape of nutmeg is the closest substitute.
- Adding boiling waterPouring boiling liquid onto the butter-flour paste all at once invites lumps. Add it in stages, whisking, and cook the sauce a minute or two below boiling so the flour loses its raw taste before the shrimps go in.
- YieldEnough for six or seven as a sauce, about a cup and a half. "Serve in a boat" means a sauceboat at the table, not poured over the fish.
Shrimp sauce belongs to the long British tradition of dressing plainly boiled or poached fish with a butter sauce sharpened by something from the sea itself -- lobster coral, anchovy, oysters, shrimps. The small brown shrimps of the Norfolk, Lancashire and Kentish coasts were cheap enough for the price note here to run to a few pence a pint, and they were commonly landed already boiled, which is consistent with the recipe insisting they only be warmed. Lobster, oyster and shrimp sauces were understood as one family, interchangeable according to what came off the boat. The same picked shrimps, potted under spiced butter, are the basis of potted shrimps, still a Morecambe Bay speciality; the shrimp butter mentioned in passing is the frugal end of the same practice, wringing flavour out of the shells rather than throwing them away.