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Shrimp Toast, with Eggs
Put a pint of picked shrimps into a stewpan with an ounce of butter and a little cayenne pepper; simmer for two minutes, then spread them on a large square of toast on a fire-proof baking-tin. Break six or eight eggs carefully over this, and cook in the oven till the eggs are set, which will be in about six to eight minutes. Dust a little pepper over, and serve at once. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. to 1s. 9d.
A late-Victorian supper dish that is essentially baked eggs on a shrimp-buttered raft of toast. It works, but two things in the original need translating: the shrimp measure and the missing oven temperature.
- A pint of picked shrimps"Picked" means already boiled and peeled, and the pint is a volume measure of the peeled meat — somewhere around 8 to 12 oz, depending how tightly it is packed. Small cold-water shrimp are what the book means; brown shrimp or the smallest available peeled shrimp are the closest match.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, and the recipe does not even specify a moderate or quick oven. Around 350F is a reasonable modern working figure, and will set six to eight eggs in roughly the six to eight minutes stated. Hotter and the whites toughen before the yolks thicken.
- Two minutes means two minutesThe shrimp are already cooked, so the butter stage is only to warm them and pick up the cayenne. They then go through a second heating in the oven; any longer in the pan and they finish as rubber.
- The toast has to be substantialOne large square cut thick from a firm loaf, toasted dry on both sides. Thin sandwich bread collapses under the eggs and buttered shrimp and turns to paste.
- Setting the eggs evenlyBreak the eggs into a cup one at a time and slide them on so the yolks sit apart rather than crowding. Pull the tin when the whites are opaque and the yolks still wobble — carryover heat finishes them on the way to the table.
- Fire-proof baking-tinAny shallow metal or ceramic dish that will go under the broiler as well as into the oven. If the whites are slow to set on top, thirty seconds of top heat closes the gap.
- YieldSix to eight eggs on one large slice serves three or four as a supper or breakfast dish, cut into squares at the table.
- The cost line"1s. 6d. to 1s. 9d." is the price in pre-decimal shillings and pence, included so a housekeeper could budget. It has no bearing on the cooking.
Cassell's belongs to the era when shrimps arrived in British kitchens already boiled and picked, sold by the pint from coastal fisheries — Morecambe Bay, the Wash, the Thames estuary — and eaten in quantity as a cheap savoury rather than treated as a luxury. Dishes built on a square of toast, with cayenne and butter doing the seasoning, were the standard vehicle: they made a small amount of shellfish stretch, needed no sauce, and could be assembled quickly for breakfast, a late supper, or the savoury course at the end of dinner. The combination of shrimp, butter and cayenne is the same one that produces potted shrimps, and the printed cost estimate is a reminder that this dictionary was written for households keeping accounts, where a recipe was judged as much on price per serving as on flavour.