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Shrimp Chowder
3 cupfuls picked shrimps 2 ozs. (2 heaping tablespoonfuls) butter 2 ozs. (2 heaping tablespoonfuls) flour I blade mace 1/4 cupful salt pork fat cut in cubes I chopped onion Salt and red pepper to season 2 pints (4 cups) milk 1/2 pint (I cup) hot cream Cook the onion in the salt pork fat. Melt the butter in a casserole, stir in the flour and seasoning, then
A milk-based chowder in the older sense: no potatoes, no tomato, just shrimp bound in a roux and enriched with cream. The book's "casserole" is a lidded flameproof pot used on the stovetop, not a modern baking dish.
- Don't let it boil once the cream is inA milk chowder thickened with a butter-flour roux will scorch on the bottom and curdle at the edges if it reaches a full boil. Bring it barely to a simmer, stirring, and hold it there.
- Add the shrimp lastThree cupfuls of already-picked (cooked) shrimp need only two or three minutes in the hot chowder to warm through. Longer and they tighten and go rubbery.
- Weights and volumesThe recipe equates 2 ozs. butter and 2 ozs. flour each with 2 heaping tablespoonfuls; by weight, 2 ozs. butter is 4 level tablespoons and 2 ozs. flour a scant half cup. A pint here is the US pint, since the recipe gives 4 cups milk and 1 cup cream.
- Blade maceA blade of mace is a whole piece of the dried lacy covering of nutmeg, added for infusion and lifted out before serving. If you have only ground mace, use about 1/8 teaspoon and expect a slightly stronger, less clean flavour.
- Salt pork fatA quarter cupful of salt pork cut in cubes, rendered slowly until the fat runs and the cubes brown. The onion cooks in that fat; the crisp scraps can go into the chowder or be reserved as a garnish.
- Red pepperThis means cayenne, not paprika or a fresh sweet pepper. A pinch at a time, tasting, since the salt pork and the shrimp both bring salt of their own.
- Heat the cream firstThe recipe specifies hot cream for a reason: cold cream stirred into a hot roux-thickened soup drops the temperature and encourages separation. Warm it in a small pan while the base cooks.
- YieldFive cups of dairy plus three cups of shrimp gives roughly six generous servings as a first course, four as a supper dish. It reheats gently but does not freeze well.
Chowder in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American cookery meant a soup built on rendered salt pork, onion and milk, with the main ingredient named afterward: clam, fish, corn, or in this case shrimp. The name is generally traced to the French chaudiere, the cauldron in which such fishermen's pots were made, and the salt-pork foundation is the surviving mark of a shipboard and coastal kitchen where cured pork kept and fresh fat did not.