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Shrimp Sandwiches
4 tablespoons butter 1 tablespoon prepared mustard 2 tablespoons shrimp paste 2 hard cooked egg yolks 1 teaspoon onion juice Cream butter thoroughly, add mustard and shrimp. Beat until thoroughly blended. Add egg yolk and onion juice. Spread liberally between slices of white or graham bread.
A compound butter rather than a salad-style filling, which is why it holds up in a thin tea sandwich instead of soaking the bread. Everything depends on the butter being soft enough to take the other ingredients without breaking.
- Shrimp pasteHere this most likely means a potted shrimp paste sold in small jars or tins, a dense salted puree closer to anchovy paste than to Southeast Asian fermented belacan, which is far saltier and stronger and is not a substitute. It may equally have meant shrimp pounded to a paste at home. If you cannot find it, finely mash cooked shrimp with a pinch of salt and a little more butter.
- Prepared mustardA mild yellow or a smooth Dijon, not dry mustard powder. Powder would need liquid and would read raw and hot in an uncooked spread.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion on a fine grater and press the pulp through a sieve, or grate directly into the bowl and discard the fibre. A teaspoon is a real quantity here; it carries most of the sharpness.
- The egg yolksPush the cooked yolks through a fine sieve before adding them. Crumbled by hand they leave grainy lumps that show up badly in a thin layer.
- Butter temperatureTake the butter to a genuinely soft, mayonnaise-like state at room temperature but do not melt it. Melted butter will not hold the paste in suspension and the spread separates as it chills.
- Graham breadA soft wholemeal sandwich loaf, sweetened lightly with molasses or honey in the American style, not a modern graham cracker product. Any close-crumbed wholemeal loaf works.
- Yield and holdingA generous half cup of spread, enough for roughly eight rounds of sandwiches cut into quarters. It keeps covered in the refrigerator for two or three days; bring it back to spreading temperature before use or it will tear the bread.