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Petites Pains de Crevettes
(Little Moulds of Shrimps.) Ingredients.
Two Eggs. One tablespoonful of Chutney. Three Spanish Olives. Two French Gherkins. Half a pint of picked Shrimps.
One gill of Cream.
One gill of Brown Stock.
What survives here is only the ingredient list; the method has been lost in the printing. The proportions are still usable if you know how little moulds of this type were built.
- A gillA gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, five fluid ounces or about 140 ml (roughly two-thirds of a US cup). The recipe therefore calls for equal volumes of cream and brown stock, a little over a cup in total.
- Half a pint of shrimpsShellfish were measured by volume when sold picked from the shell. Half an imperial pint of picked shrimps is roughly 4-5 oz by weight, or about 1 lb of shrimp in the shell.
- Picked shrimpsThese are the small brown or pink shrimps of the British coast, boiled and hand-picked, sold ready to eat. Small cold-water shrimp are the closest supermarket equivalent; large warm-water prawns are the wrong texture and will not pack into a small mould.
- Brown stockA veal or beef stock reduced and coloured, not a fish stock. Its presence suggests a dish meant to taste meaty and deep rather than delicate.
- The missing binderCream and stock alone will not set. A mould of this period was held together either with softened gelatine or aspic in the stock, or by baking the mixture in buttered dariole moulds in a bain-marie until just firm. The ingredient list as printed gives no guidance on which.
- Pains, not painPains here means small loaf-shaped moulds, not bread rolls. Dariole or small timbale moulds, buttered and lined with a little of the shrimp, would serve.
- Yield and serviceThese quantities would fill roughly six to eight small moulds. Turn out and serve on a croute or with a spoonful of the stock reduced to a glaze.
- Heat and shrimpThe shrimps are already cooked. Whatever method is used, they should be warmed through only; prolonged cooking in the custard or stock will make them tough and squeaky.
The savoury was a fixture of the late Victorian and Edwardian dinner, a small hot salt dish served after the sweet and before dessert. Shrimps suited it well: cheap, intensely flavoured, often sold ready picked, and small enough to line a mould neatly. A French title of this kind was the convention of the period rather than a claim of French origin, since English high-class cookery books habitually named dishes in kitchen French. The use of brown stock rather than fish fumet may mark this as a dish built to sit at the end of a meat dinner rather than as a fish course.