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Lobster and Other Sea Fish (Shrimps la Poulette)
Shrimps à la Poulette.
Make a sauce of one-fourth a cup, each, of butter and flour, half a teaspoonful of salt, a dash of pepper and one cup and a half of white stock; add one tablespoonful of anchovy essence and a quart of shelled shrimps. When hot add the beaten yolks of two eggs, with half a cup of cream.
Lastly, add a tablespoonful of lemon juice and serve, without boiling, on sippets of toast.
A classic poulette — velouté finished with egg yolk, cream and lemon — built in the chafing dish at table. The whole dish turns on the last minute of heat.
- Never let it boilOnce the yolks and cream go in, the sauce must stay below a simmer; the original says "without boiling" and means it. Much above 180F the yolks coagulate and the sauce breaks into grains. Pull the pan off the flame or set it over hot water for the finish.
- A quart of shelled shrimpsVolume, not weight: roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb of peeled shrimp. Shrimp of the period were commonly sold already boiled, in which case they need only heating through. Raw shrimp today take 2-3 minutes in the hot sauce; longer and they tighten and weep water into it.
- White stockAn unbrowned veal or chicken stock. Any light chicken stock works; avoid dark or heavily reduced stock, which muddies both the color and the delicacy the sauce is after.
- Anchovy essenceA thin bottled anchovy sauce of the period, saltier and looser than modern paste. Substitute about two teaspoons of anchovy paste, or a tablespoon of colatura or Asian fish sauce, and hold back on the salt until you have tasted.
- The roux is heavyFour tablespoons each of butter and flour to a cup and a half of stock gives a very stiff base — closer to a panada — which is deliberate, since the cream and yolks thin it. If it seizes before the cream goes in, loosen it with a little more warm stock.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toast, crusts off, traditionally cut from a plain white loaf and sometimes fried in butter. Cut and toast them before you start the sauce; the dish cannot wait.
- YieldServes four as a supper dish or six as a first course. Add the lemon juice off the heat and at the very end — acid dropped into the hot sauce early encourages the yolks to curdle.
À la poulette is one of the old French mother-sauce derivatives: a velouté loosened with cream, bound with egg yolk and sharpened with lemon; the origin of the name is not settled, though it is often said to refer to the sauce rather than to any chicken in the dish. It was a common treatment for mild, delicate things — mussels, sweetbreads, tripe, veal, and here shrimp. The chafing dish was fashionable in American homes around 1900 for late suppers and after-theatre entertaining, and a poulette suited it exactly: everything can be assembled from stock, butter and cooked shellfish in a few minutes at the table, with no oven and no carving. Anchovy essence, now uncommon on grocery shelves, was then a common bottled seasoning used the way cooks now reach for Worcestershire, adding salt and savor without announcing itself as fish.</aside>