Home › Entrees › Shrimps a la Newburg
Shrimps a la Newburg
1 pint shrimps 3 tablespoons butter 1/2 teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne 1 teaspoon lemon juice 1 teaspoon flour 1/2 cup cream Yolks 2 eggs 2 tablespoons Sherry wine Clean shrimps and cook three minutes in two tablespoons butter. Add salt, cayenne, and lemon juice, and cook one minute. Remove shrimps, and put remaining butter in chafing-dish, add flour and cream; when thickened, add yolks of eggs slightly beaten, shrimps, and wine. Serve with toast or Puff Paste Points.
A chafing-dish entree from the era when Newburg sauce was a supper-room standard. The whole dish hangs on keeping the egg yolks below a simmer.
- Do not let it boilOnce the yolks go in, the sauce must be held below a simmer and stirred constantly, or it will curdle into scrambled egg in cream. Pull the pan off the heat entirely while the yolks come up to temperature if the burner runs hot.
- A pint of shrimpsShellfish here is measured by volume, not weight: a pint of shelled, cooked or raw-peeled shrimp is roughly 3/4 to 1 lb. Small or medium shrimp suit the sauce better than jumbo.
- CleaningIn this period "clean" meant shelling and removing the dark vein. Buy peeled and deveined shrimp and this step disappears.
- Three minutes is for raw shrimpRaw shrimp of medium size are done in two to three minutes in butter, when they turn opaque and curl. If you start with cooked shrimp, add them only at the end with the wine, long enough to warm through.
- One teaspoon flourThat is a very light thickening for half a cup of cream: the yolks are doing most of the work. Expect a pourable sauce that coats, not a gravy.
- Chafing-dishThe recipe assumes a table-top pan over a spirit lamp, giving a weak, easily controlled flame; such pans were often fitted with a hot-water pan beneath. A heavy saucepan over low heat, or a bowl set over barely steaming water, gives the same gentleness.
- SherryUse a dry or medium sherry, not cream sherry. It goes in at the very end and is barely cooked, so its character carries into the finished dish.
- YieldProbably two as a main course or four as a small entree; the recipe gives no yield. It is served over toast or, as the recipe directs, Puff Paste Points.
Newburg sauce - cream, egg yolks, butter and sherry, sometimes with a little cayenne - is generally traced to Delmonico's in New York in the 1870s, where it was first made with lobster and is said to have been named for a patron; the frequently repeated story of the name being altered from "Wenberg" to "Newburg" after a falling-out is traditional rather than documented. The formula spread quickly to other shellfish, shrimp being the cheaper and more widely available option, and by the turn of the century it had become the archetypal chafing-dish preparation. That matters for understanding the recipe: chafing-dish cookery was fashionable domestic entertaining, done at the table in front of guests, which is exactly why a dish built on an easily curdled egg sauce needed a gentle, controllable flame.