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Shrimp Wiggle
1 cup canned peas 1 small can shrimps 1 tablespoon flour 1 cup milk 1 tablespoon butter 1/2 teaspoon salt Dash of red pepper Melt the butter; stir in the flour and seasoning; then add the milk gradually. When it thickens empty into it the peas and shrimps; cover and when heated through serve in patty cups or on crackers.
A chafing-dish standby reduced to its simplest terms: a thin white sauce, a can of peas, a can of shrimp. It comes together in under ten minutes, and the only way to spoil it is to keep it over heat.
- The hinge: heat through, do not cookCanned shrimp are already cooked, and a second cooking turns them fibrous and squeaky. Add them at the very end, cover, and give them two or three minutes off the direct heat.
- A small can of shrimpsThe period can held roughly 4 to 5 ounces drained, which is what a modern tin still runs. Drain and rinse them well; the packing liquid carries a metallic edge that will dominate a sauce this plain.
- Sauce consistencyOne tablespoon each of butter and flour to a cup of milk is a thin sauce by design; it should coat a spoon lightly, not mound. If you want it heavier for serving on crackers, go to a tablespoon and a half of each.
- Red pepperCayenne, not paprika and not crushed chile flakes. A dash means about an eighth of a teaspoon.
- Canned peasThese were soft, sweet and grey-green, and they collapsed into the sauce. Frozen peas, thawed, are the closer match in flavour to what a modern palate wants; add them with the shrimp rather than boiling them first.
- Patty cupsSmall baked pastry cases; puff-pastry 'patty shells' of this kind were sold ready-made. Vol-au-vent cases, toast points or plain soda crackers all work.
- YieldTwo generous servings as a lunch or supper dish, four as a light savoury on crackers.
Shrimp wiggle belongs to the chafing-dish craze that ran from the 1890s through the 1920s, when a spirit lamp and a copper pan let people cook at the table in rooms with no kitchen: dormitories, boarding houses, clubrooms, the first small apartments. Its close relatives are lobster Newburg at the expensive end and creamed chipped beef at the cheap one, and the whole family depends on two things arriving in the American pantry at once — reliable canned seafood and canned peas. The name is generally taken to be college slang, and the dish is often associated with late-night student cooking of the period.