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Shrimp Fricassee
1 small onion 1 tablespoon shortening 1 tablespoon flour 1/2 cup water 2 cups tomato puree 2 pounds shrimps 1 egg yolk, beaten Fry onion in shortening until well browned, then add flour, water and strained tomato. When thoroughly heated, add cooked, shelled and cleaned shrimp. Simmer for fifteen minutes. Add the well beaten egg yolk and serve hot on toast. Serves 6.
A simple tomato-based shrimp dish from the era when "fricassee" meant almost anything simmered in sauce. Two adjustments make it work: shorten the simmer and temper the egg yolk.
- The simmer is far too longAlready-cooked shrimp held fifteen minutes in sauce turn tough and stringy. Build and reduce the tomato sauce for that fifteen minutes, then fold the shrimp in and heat through for two to three minutes only.
- Tempering the yolkWhisk a ladle of the hot sauce into the beaten yolk before returning it to the pan, and keep the pan off a hard boil afterward. Poured in straight, the yolk scrambles into threads.
- Two pounds of shrimpThe recipe does not say whether this is weighed in the shell or after peeling. If shell-on, expect appreciably less than two pounds of meat once peeled, which is still ample for six; if you buy shrimp already peeled, around a pound will do.
- ShorteningVegetable shortening was widely used in American cookbooks of this general period. Butter or oil can be substituted here, and butter suits the tomato.
- Tomato puree and "strained tomato"The recipe uses both terms for the same thing. Canned tomato puree or passata is the modern equivalent; American canned tomato sauce is close enough. Avoid tomato paste, which is far more concentrated.
- SeasoningNo salt or pepper is listed. The sauce needs both, and a squeeze of lemon at the end will lift a flat puree.
- ServingThe recipe specifies nothing beyond 'on toast'. Toast at the last moment so the sauce does not soak through before it reaches the table.
"Fricassee" had by this point drifted a long way from its French sense of meat cut up and stewed in its own sauce; here it simply means shrimp in a thickened tomato gravy. The egg yolk finish is an older technique, a liaison used to enrich and lightly bind a sauce, and its survival in a recipe otherwise built on canned puree shows how convenience products were absorbed into inherited method.