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Shrimp Cocktail
Substitute one pint shrimp for clams, and proceed as for clam cocktail. 30 oysters in the shell Oysters on Half Shell 6 teaspoons grated horseradish 1/4 teaspoon salt cayenne parsley 3 lemons cut in halves 6 teaspoons vinegar 1 tablespoon tomato catsup paprika Open oysters; loosen. Serve in shell on bed of ice, having the small ends of the shell point toward the center of the dish. Wash lemons, cut in halves, remove seeds, and serve one half in the center of each plate. Garnish with parsley. Mix horseradish, salt, vinegar, and tomato catsup, seasoned with paprika and cayenne. Serve in small glass dish and pass to each person.
Clams on Half Shell Follow recipe for oysters on half shell, substituting clams.
Three related first courses run together here: a shrimp cocktail, oysters on the half shell with a cocktail sauce, and the same treatment for clams. The quantities given cover six people.
- What "one pint shrimp" meansThe shrimp are measured by volume rather than weight, and are understood to be already cooked and peeled. A pint of small cooked shrimp is roughly 12 oz to 1 lb by weight, enough for six small cocktail glasses.
- Thirty oysters, six dinersFive oysters per person, served on the deep half shell. Buy them closed and heavy; discard any that gape and will not shut when tapped.
- Bed of iceThe recipe specifies only a bed of ice; crushed ice packs better than cubes and lets the shells sit level so the liquor stays in them. Chilled plates help too, though the book does not call for them.
- The catsup has changedTomato catsup of the period varied a good deal, and many were thinner and sharper than modern ketchup, though commercial brands were already sweetened by this date. If today's product makes the sauce taste sugary, cut it with extra vinegar and horseradish.
- HorseradishSix teaspoons of freshly grated horseradish is the intended heat source. Jarred horseradish is packed in vinegar and is milder, so use rather more of it and reduce the added vinegar accordingly.
- Cayenne and paprikaBoth are given without measure. Paprika here is mostly for colour; the cayenne is the bite. Start at a pinch of each.
- Raw shellfishOysters and clams are eaten raw here, as they still are. Buy from a supplier that tags for harvest area and date, keep them cold, and note that anyone pregnant, immunocompromised or with liver disease should avoid raw shellfish entirely because of Vibrio.
- Shucking"Open oysters; loosen" means severing the adductor muscle from both shells so the oyster lifts free with a fork. Do it over a bowl and pour any spilled liquor back into the shell.
Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney Company, the Boston chocolate manufacturer, and like most house cookbooks of its type it went well beyond the sponsor's product into a full course-by-course household manual. The oyster cocktail belongs to a fashion that took hold in American restaurants and hotels in the last quarter of the nineteenth century — the name is generally traced to the practice of serving shellfish in a stemmed glass in place of a pre-dinner drink, and San Francisco is the city most often credited with popularising it, though the claim is traditional rather than documented. Shrimp came to the form later and largely by substitution, exactly as this entry describes it: take the clam recipe and swap the shellfish. That the book treats oysters, clams and shrimp as interchangeable says something about how cheap and abundant all three still were on the Atlantic coast in 1907, before oyster beds were fished and silted out of production.