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Shrimps, Buttered
Pick a pint of fresh shrimps, and put them into a saucepan, with three-quarters of a pint of good stock and a spoonful of brown thickening, or, if preferred, with the same quantity of white sauce. Add a seasoning of salt, pepper, and pounded mace, and simmer all gently together till the shrimps are hot and tender. Serve on a hot dish, and garnish with toasted sippets. Time to simmer the shrimps, three minutes. Probable cost, shrimps, 2d. to 4d. per pint. Sufficient for three or four persons. (See also the recipe for PRAWNS, BUTTERED.)
A short Victorian supper dish built on already-cooked shrimps, a little stock and a thickening. The whole thing takes minutes once the shrimps are picked.
- Three minutes means three minutesThe shrimps here are already boiled — they are only being warmed through in the sauce. Anything past a few minutes and they tighten into rubber. Have the sauce hot and seasoned before the shrimps go in.
- A pint of shrimpsShrimps were sold by volume, unpeeled. A pint of small brown shrimps in the shell yields roughly 4 to 5 oz of picked meat; if you are buying peeled cooked shrimp, 5 oz is the right target. Larger cold-water prawns work but change the character.
- Brown thickeningA period term for a browned flour-and-butter roux, kept made up in the larder. About 1 tablespoon each butter and flour cooked to a nut colour will thicken the three-quarters pint (about 15 fl oz, roughly 1 3/4 cups) of stock here. The white sauce alternative is a plain béchamel or velouté of the same volume.
- Where the butter isDespite the name, no butter is specified. Such butter as there is comes in through the thickening, and the dish is much better for a further ounce or two of cold butter swirled in off the heat at the end.
- Pounded maceBlade mace crushed in a mortar. Ground mace from a jar is a fair substitute; use a pinch, no more, as it turns soapy in quantity. It is the classic seasoning for shrimp in English cookery and should be noticeable but not dominant.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toast or fried bread, set round the edge of the dish. Cut them thin, toast them dry, and add them at the last moment or they go soft in the sauce.
- Stock"Good stock" in a book of this kind generally means a light meat or veal stock. A shellfish stock made from the picked shrimp shells is closer to what a modern cook would want, and is quickly made.
- YieldThree to four as a light course or savoury, as stated — but that assumes a Victorian dinner of many courses. Two people will finish it as a supper dish.
Shrimps by the pint were among the cheapest animal food in Victorian Britain: the recipe's own note of 2d. to 4d. a pint puts them well below meat, and shrimp sellers worked the streets of London and the coastal resorts alike. Much of that catch was small brown shrimp from fisheries such as the Thames estuary, Morecambe Bay and the Wash, commonly boiled soon after landing and sold ready-cooked, which is why the cook here has only to warm them. Mace and shrimp is a long-established pairing in English cookery and survives in potted shrimps, still made to much the same seasoning. Cassell's cross-reference to buttered prawns reflects how the dictionary was built — a vast alphabet of short entries, with the larger, costlier shellfish given its own headword and the same treatment.