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Petites Pâtés Chauds de
- Crevettes. (Prawn Patties, Hot.) Ingredients.
One gill of Hollandaise Sauce.
Half an ounce of Butter.
One dozen Prawns.
Spawn. Quarter of a pound of Short Crust.
Line some dariole moulds with the crust, fill them with rice and bake. Shell the prawns, cut the tails in neat pieces. Pound the butter with the shells and a little spawn (if possible), and rub through a hair sieve. Heat the Hollandaise sauce, stir in the butter and the prawns. Fill the cases, and serve on a folded napkin.
A late-Victorian savoury course in miniature: blind-baked pastry cases filled with prawns bound in hollandaise enriched with shellfish butter. Everything can be prepared in advance except the filling, which must be assembled at the last minute.
- The hinge: keep the sauce below a simmerHollandaise splits above roughly 160F/70C, and the shell butter stirred into it is a further emulsion waiting to break. Warm the sauce over hot, not boiling, water and fold in the butter and prawns off the heat.
- A gillIn this British book a gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, 5 fl oz, so about two-thirds of a US cup. American books of the same date often mean half a cup.
- The rice is not an ingredientThis is blind baking. The rice is a weight, poured into the lined moulds over a scrap of paper and tipped out once the cases are set; it is discarded, not served. The recipe gives no temperature or time: bake in a moderately hot oven until the crust is dry and pale gold.
- Dariole mouldsSmall straight-sided metal cups, anything from about 2 to 4 fl oz. Deep tartlet tins, cannele moulds or a mini muffin tin all work; line them thin, as the pastry is a container rather than the point of the dish.
- "Quarter of a pound of Short Crust"Ambiguous: it may mean 4 oz of made paste or 4 oz of flour with fat to match. Four ounces of finished shortcrust will line roughly half a dozen small moulds, about the right number for a dozen prawn tails.
- SpawnThe coral of a hen prawn, once common on whole shell-on prawns and now almost never seen at a fish counter. It is there for colour and depth; the original already concedes "if possible." Lobster or crab roe serves the same purpose if you have it.
- Shell butterPound the shells hard with the softened butter, then work it through a fine sieve or press it through muslin. A short scald of the shells in a dry pan first draws out more flavour, and a fine drum sieve stands in for the hair sieve.
- Prawns are already cookedCold-water prawns bought shell-on are usually sold ready boiled. If so, they need only to come up to temperature in the sauce; held over heat they tighten and go woolly.
- Yield and serviceAbout six small patties, serving three or four as a savoury or eight or so as an hors d'oeuvre with drinks. Fill and send out at once, or the crust softens; the folded napkin was the conventional way of sending up such small hot cases, steadying them and taking up any leakage.
The petit pâté chaud belongs to the savoury course, the small hot or piquant dish that closed a formal British dinner after the sweets and before dessert fruit, a sequence peculiar to English tables and largely unknown in France despite the French naming. Cookery books of the 1890s and 1900s are full of these thimble-sized cases filled with shrimps, oysters, mushrooms or cheese, since the savoury had to be sharp, small and immaculate rather than filling. The technique of pounding shells with butter and forcing them through a sieve is the same one that produces lobster and crayfish butters throughout classical kitchen practice: the shells hold much of the aroma, and fat is the medium that carries it. Its survival here shows how thoroughly the professional French repertoire had been absorbed into the English country-house kitchen by this period.