Shrimps, Potted
INGREDIENTS. -1 pint of shelled shrimps, 1/4 lb. of fresh butter, 1 blade of pounded mace, cayenne to taste; when liked, a little nutmeg. AVERAGE COST, 18. 3d.
Have ready a pint of picked shrimps, and put them, with the other ingredients, into a stewpan; let them heat gradually in the butter, but do not let it boil. Pour into small pots, and when cold, cover with melted butter, and carefully exclude the air.
TIME.- hour to soak in the butter.
Skate, To Choose. This fish should be chosen for its firmness, breadth and thickness, and should have a creamy THORNBACK SKATE. appearance. When crimped, it should not be kept longer than a day or two, as all kinds of crimped fish soon become sour.
Thornback is often substituted for skate, but is very inferior in quality to the true skate.
A straightforward potted shellfish preparation: cooked shrimps warmed through in spiced butter, packed tight, and sealed. The whole thing turns on keeping the butter below a simmer.
- Never let the butter boilThe shrimps are already cooked; the butter is only a carrier for the spice and a warm bath. If it bubbles, the shrimps tighten into rubber and the butter browns, which spoils both flavour and the clean set on top.
- The quantitiesA pint of shelled shrimps is a volume measure, roughly 10-12 oz (300-350 g) of small peeled brown or pink shrimps. Quarter pound of butter is 4 oz (115 g). The cost line reads one shilling and threepence, a Victorian price note of no use at the till.
- Which shrimpsIn period English usage 'shrimps' normally meant the small brown shrimp, sold cooked and peeled, and that remains the traditional choice. Large warm-water prawns are coarser in texture and waterier; if you use them, chop them small.
- MaceA blade of mace is one whole piece of the lacy aril around a nutmeg, pounded to powder in a mortar. Roughly a quarter teaspoon of ground mace stands in. Mace, not nutmeg, is the defining flavour of potted shrimps.
- Soaking timeThe original allows a period of gentle steeping in the warm butter so the spice penetrates. Half an hour off direct heat, kept just warm, does the job; the printed figure here has lost its fraction.
- Sealing and clarified butterThe covering butter should be clarified, not merely melted, or the milk solids underneath will sour first. Pour it over cold pots so it sets as a clean unbroken seal.
- StorageThe butter seal was a Victorian larder measure, not a substitute for refrigeration. Keep the pots chilled, keep the seal intact, and eat within three or four days; once broken into, finish them the same day.
- Yield and servingEnough for four small ramekins as a starter. Serve cold or barely cool with hot brown toast, lemon and cayenne, letting the butter soften rather than melt.
Potting -- cooking a meat or fish, packing it into a small pot and sealing it under a layer of fat -- was one of the standard English larder techniques before reliable chilling, and it survives almost unchanged in the potted shrimps still associated with Morecambe Bay. The tiny brown shrimp of the Lancashire and Norfolk coasts were landed and boiled in enormous quantities in the nineteenth century, and the labour of peeling them, well attested as women's work in fishing villages, was what made a pint of picked shrimps a genuine expense rather than a trifle. Mace is the near-universal seasoning in English potting recipes of the period, appearing in potted beef, potted hare and potted lobster alike, and its pairing with shrimp is among the combinations that have outlasted the technique's practical purpose.