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SHRIMP SAUCE (M. Ude's recipe)
Put into a stewpan a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, a tea-spoonful of flour, a small glassful of water, some salt and pepper, and a spoonful of the essence of anchovies; put this on the stove. As soon as the sauce is thick take it off, and put in half a pint of shelled shrimps, after having washed them well. Never neglect to season sauces; without seasoning the best cookery is good for nothing.
A butter sauce thickened with a token amount of flour, in the manner of early nineteenth-century French practice rather than a modern roux-based béchamel. It comes together in a few minutes and is easily broken by overheating.
- The hinge: heat the shrimps, do not cook themThe shrimps go in off the heat, at the end. They are already cooked; a minute in the hot sauce is enough to warm them, and anything longer turns them tight and dry.
- "A small glassful of water"This is genuinely imprecise — glasses in the period ranged from about 2 to 5 fl oz. Start with 1/4 cup and add more only if the sauce is too stiff to coat; a quarter pound of butter to a teaspoon of flour will never be a thick sauce in the modern sense.
- Butter-to-flour ratioOne teaspoon of flour to 4 oz butter gives barely any thickening. The sauce holds because the butter emulsifies into the water, so keep the pan at a bare simmer and whisk. Fierce heat splits it.
- Essence of anchoviesA bottled anchovy seasoning already in use in Ude's day, essentially anchovy and salt, sometimes with vinegar or spice; still sold as anchovy essence in Britain. Anchovy paste thinned with a little water is the closest substitute; use about a teaspoon and taste, as modern pastes are generally saltier than the old essence.
- Half a pint of shrimpsA volume measure of already-shelled shrimp, roughly 4 to 5 oz by weight. The original assumes small brown or pink shrimps; if using larger prawns, chop them so they sit in the sauce rather than on it.
- "Put this on the stove"The recipe specifies nothing beyond moderate direct heat; period 'stoves' ranged from a charcoal stew-stove to a range top. On a modern burner use medium-low, or hold the pan just off the heat as it thickens.
- SeasoningUde's closing line is the point of the recipe. Season the water and butter before the anchovy goes in, then taste again after — anchovy essence carries a great deal of salt and the balance shifts.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest roughly four portions, and a sauce of this kind was usually served with plainly boiled or poached white fish. Spoon it over at the table; it will not hold warm for long without separating.
Louis Eustache Ude was among the best-known chefs working in England in the first half of the nineteenth century, said by his own account to have cooked for Louis XVI before the Revolution, and later cook to the Earl of Sefton and to Crockford's club in London; his The French Cook (first published 1813) went through many editions and was quarried by later compilers, which may be how his name comes to be attached to an entry in Cassell's decades afterwards. Shrimp sauce itself is thoroughly English rather than French — a standard accompaniment to boiled turbot and cod in Georgian and Victorian dining, and one of a family of butter sauces (lobster, oyster, egg) that made plainly cooked fish worth eating. What marks this as Ude's is the treatment: almost no flour, a heavy proportion of butter, and the parting insistence on seasoning, a theme he returns to repeatedly in his own book.