Shrimp Salad
MAYONAISE OF SHRIMPS OR PRAWNS, OR SHRIMPS (CREVETTES) EN MAYONAISE. 1. Prepare about a quart of shrimps divested of their coat of mail, tails, heads and flourishes, and place them in a bowl.
Make the thin mayonaise or salad cream and pour it over the shrimps. Take some heads of lettuce from the pan of ice-water in which they have lain, shake them free from water and shred them as fine as possible with a sharp knife, on a clean board kept for the purpose. About enough to fill a 2 quart pan will do. Place a little pile of the lettuce in the small, deep dish, ice cream saucer or deep glass plate; make a hollow in the middle, forming a border of lettuce, and in the hollow place a good spoonful of the shrimps and dressing. Dish up these only as needed, for the lettuce soon dries and loses its color. 2. Make the thick mayonaise, or else use that termed American salad dressing, made of about the same consistence.
Prepare the shrimps, put them in a bowl, pour in a basting-spoonful of vinegar, two of oil, a little white pepper, and shake about, making the shrimps look moist and shining.
Prepare small white hearts of lettuce, one for each individual dish, pull them apart and lay the leaves slantwise, wreath fashion, around the dish. Place a neat spoonful of the seasoned shrimps in the center and over them pour or spread a spoonful of the mayonaise. 3. For a large dish like the preceding fill the shrimps, after seasoning with oil and vinegar, into a melon mould (a mould in shape of half a melon), and slighly press to give them the shape. Turn them out onto a flat dish already prepared with leaves of heart lettuce. Pour the mayonaise over the shrimps and decorate with eggs, olives, parsley, cut shapes of beets, flowers, etc. 4. Having seasoned the shrimps shape them for individual dishes by pressing a spoonful into a custard cup, or egg cup or similar mould. Prepare about a quart of celery by chopping it fine and seasoning in like manner as the shrimps, with oil, vinegar and white pepper, adding a little salt also.
Turn the shrimps on to their dish and place around a border of the celery with a teaspoon. Finish with a spoonful of mayonaise on top of the shrimps. Or the mayonaise may be dispensed with, or leave the shrimps without a dressing, and pour the allemande dressing from a spoon over the celery border. 5. Place a neat spoonful of shrimps--either seasoned or not, as the time may allow--on the small flat dish, and over the top spread a spoonful of mayonaise. Throw 3 or 4 capers in the center, place 2 or 3 quarters of hard-boiled egg around, or 3 or 4 olives, like the beet balls on the potato salad, or use both, and any other ornament such as cress or parsley that may be at hand. 6. Reverse the order of any of the foregoing, when the shrimps are of good shape, and handsomely coiled, by making a pile of shred lettuce or chopped celery in the middle and placing the shrimps around and upon it. A very pretty mixture may be made of shrimps in cress, or water cress, without any other dressing.
And now we cannot well go further without some aspic jelly, and will proceed to make it. "What a perfect family!" exclaimed Hugo, as he extracted a couple of fat little birds from their bed of aspic jelly. "Everything they do in such perfect taste. How safe you were here to have ortolans for supper!"--Lothair. "Garnished with cut carrots, like a made dish in Bloomsbury Square."--Pelham. "The dinner was a banquet-a choice boquet before every guest, turtle and venison and piles of whitebait, and pineapples of prodigious size, and bunches' of grapes that had gained prizes. The champagne seemed to flow in fountains, and was only interrupted that the guest might quaff Burgundy or taste Tokay. But what was more delightful than all was the enjoyment of all present, and especially of their host. That is a rare sight. Banquets are not rare, nor choice guests, nor gracious hosts; but when do we ever see a person enjoy anything?"--Endymion. "Pantagruel did not like this pack of rascally scoundrels, with their manifold kitchen sacrifices, and would have been gone had not Epistemon prevailed with him to stay and see the end of the farce. He then asked the skipper what these gastrolatous hobgoblins used to sacrifice to their god Gaster on interlarded fish days? 'For his first course,' said the skipper, 'they give him caviare, potages, then salads a hundred varieties, of cresses, sodden hoptops, spinage, celery, sives, rampions, mushrooms, asparagus, woodbind, red herrings, pilchards, an chovies, fry of tunny, pickled eels, cauliflowers, beans, salt salmon, prawns, cray-fish, and a world of others."--French Classic. Everybody had an appetite for dinner to-day, and the dinner was worthy of the appetites. Zenobia's husband declared to himself that he never dined so well, though he gave his chef pound 500 a year."--Endymion. " `And now you think of remaining here?' said Mr. Wilton. `No.' said the lady, 'that I can not do. I love everything in this country except its climate, and, perhaps, its hotels.'"--Endymion. " `The odd thing is,' said St. Aldegonde, 'you never can get anything to eat in these houses. Their infernal cooks spoil everything'"--Lothair. " `No,' said Harold, `the question is, whether the English climate will agree with me. It's deuced shifting and damp; and as for the food, it would be the finest thing in the world for this country if the Southern cooks would change their religion, got persecuted, and fly to England, as the old silk-weavers did.' `There are plenty of foreign cooks for those who are rich enough to pay for them, I suppose,' said Mrs. Transome, `but they are unpleasant people to have about one's house'"--Felix Holt. " `The blonde misses of Albion see nothing in the dull inhabitants of their brumous isle, which can compare with the ardor and vivacity of the children of the South. We bring our sunshine with us. My genius would use itself in the company of these rustics-the poesy of my art can not be understood by these carnivorous insularies.'"--Monsieur le chef Mirobolant.--Pendennis. "Then Answered Dingdong: `I bring these sheep out of a country where the very hogs, God be with us, live on nothing but myrobolaus.'"--French Classic. ` And so, with a nod, he walked off to the cook's shop at the corner of the Vicolo San Nicolo, and bought him half a loaf of black bread and a plate of beans and oil, upon which frugal fare, washed down with another draught from the green pitcher, he presently made his solitary meal. His rage was ever now."--Lord Brackenbury.
Perhaps a little familiarizing talk about aspic jelly will do more good than the bald receipt for making it alone. For, paradoxically enough, aspic jelly is the one unnecessary article that we cannot possibly do without in the kitchen, not in the kitchen of a house that aims to be above the garnish of cut carrots style of Bloomsbury Square. Aspic jelly is one of the barriers, greater a good deal than mayonaise, which shut off the European style, or, more strictly speaking, French cookery from the popular appreciation and adoption. You have opened a hotel. You are going to be first class. Oh, yes. You get a foreign cook, but instead of the decided improvement in the get-up of common article which you looked for, unless he be a very reasonable man and quick to perceive your wishes you will find him, most likely, engaged in the preparation of some un-intelligible nonsensicalities that were not included in your plans at all. He thinks you must have your dishes garnished, ornamented, and he is not the one to give you a garnish of cut carrots or turnips. He will place around your dishes "bold croutons of aspic jelly," as his celebrated masters direct. To get this he will bother you considerably, ordering calves' feet, chickens, pigs' feet, gravy beef, veal shanks, gelatine, lemons, eggs, flavorings, etc. As you are not intending to have calves' feet, etc., on the table, perhaps you can't see the use of all these things and will forget them for a few days, to the great distress of the cook. And when they do come the zealous fellow who means to set your house on the very top pinnacle of first classness may be seen working at night after all others are in bed doing what seems foolishness-but he is carrying on his art. And after that supply is exhausted and a new lot of materials called for you may with an effort remember that there was on the table a dish of cold birds in a bed of jelly, which one or two out of fifty persons-a Lothair, or some such stranger-saw and admired. You will remember the shapes or the border of chopped jelly around the dishes that sparkled with it as if set in jewelry, and a boned turkey entirely coated with transparent jelly, of which somebody sitting near said, "How pretty," and "Is it good to eat?" And then perhaps you have to think over the unsatisfactory condition of the roasts and the mashed potatoes and conclude that French cookery is one of the things that no fellow can understand, while the cook, discouraged, may be repeating some of the words of Monsieur Alcibiades Mirobolant above quoted. There is a want of mutual understanding in these matters. The foreign cook knowing that these extra accomplishments are what make him different from the home-bread article is apt to magnify their importance out of all reason, and not being used to count the cost of labor and material, is almost sure to take the longest way round about to reach the desired end. Hotel-keepers want French cooks with American ways, and American cooks with French knowledge. It is French to know how to make and how to use aspic jelly. For that reason we cannot quite do without making it once a week, and this regardless of whether people call for it or not. It is well known that it is not necessary to existence. Doctor Tanner quite recently lived forty days and forty nights without once tasting aspic jelly; but it is a matter of fashion. It has been seen that aspic is mentioned often in the loftiest menus, and the initiated are cognizant of aspic in many dishes besides where it is not mentioned by name. Because the leaders on the other side choose, followers on this side must. The most delicate flattery of their table hotel-keepers ever receive, and generally the most highly appreciated, is when distinguished parties look on admiringly and say, "You employ French cooks, don't you?"--though perhaps Pompey and Dina "done been done it all themselves." However, distinguished parties never say that when the French in the bill of fare is Choctaw. Meat jelly in the rough is no foreigner, however, but is native everywhere. The English name is savory jelly, aspic is the same refined. This ought to be better understood, that the first consideration should be to make and keep the jelly savory, so that the meat it goes with is improved by it-the jelly combining several fine flavors and the essence of choice game, may be even more delicious and more sought after by epicures than the meat itself. That is where skill and refinement in cookery come in. The great raised cold pork and venison pies or pastys, the brawn and the boars head on the oaken tables of Cedric and Athelstane, the Saxon earles of Ivanhoe, were filled and set and solid with aspic jelly in the rough. It was the gravy set with its own richness, but dark gray and looked as if it wanted straining But the earls were invited by the French Prince John and his nobles to a feast, and there was a fine bird pie, cold, of which the gravy had been clarified. The birds were so rare and costly as to be almost priceless, and betwixt them the aspic jelly had been poured and looked like amber. And even Athelstane appreciated the merits of that pie filled with delicate aspic, for after he had gobbled the whole business he wiped his mouth and asked what that thing was that was so good. Now, we don't want to say that aspic jelly, taking it all round, is better than rich gravy, but it certainly is far more ornamental, and while you are making it to serve with fat little reed birds or rice birds because it is ornamental, take care it does not get dosed with unsuitable herbs and vegetables, and then stick and burn on the bottom, and taste worse than scorched beans. The cook and confectioner can take the jelly from the pigs-feet keg and bring it back looking as clear as glass, and when broken it will shine "like dew on the gowan lying" but the demands of refined cookery will not be satisfied unless it taste as good as it looks. Sometimes there is a remainder of a good looking amber clear soup left over that sets in jelly when cold, and you say involuntarily to yourself, "how rich that was, and what a pity to throw it away." Perhaps it need not be. It will make savory jelly for something-for pressed corned beef and the like. But when there is a surplus of the broth that fowls and turkeys have been boiled in you have as good a material for aspic as can be made. Understanding this and a little rule or two, the terrors of jelly-making and the dark mysteries of galantines and aspic salads will disappear.
One and a half ounces of gelatine to a quart of water will make jelly, or One ounce of gelatine to a quart of good broth, and less still, the stronger the broth may be.
One calf's foot boiled in 3 quarts of water will make a quart of jelly without any gelatine. A pig's foot and shank does the same. Fowls either old or young boiled tender in the liquor are necessary for good quality. Veal and veal shanks and coarse beef are also used, but will not do very well alone. "Supper time approaching, Don Quixote retired to his apartment, and Sancho inquired of the host what they could have to eat. The landlord told him his paiate should be suited-for whatever the air, earth and sea produced, of birds, beast or fish, that inn was abundantly provided with. `There is no need of all that,' quoth Sancho; `roast us but a couple of chickens, and we shall be satisfied; for my master hath a delicate stomach, and I am no glutton.' " `As for chickens,' said `the' innkeeper,' `truly we have none, for the kites have devoured them.' `Then let a pullet be roasted,' said Sancho; 'only see that it be tender.' `A pullet? my father!" answered the host; faith and troth, I sent about fifty yesterday to the city to be sold; but excepting pullets, ask for what you will.' `Why, then,' quoth Sancho, `e'en give us a good joint of veal or kid, for they cannot be wanting.' `Veal or kid?' replied the host, `ah, now I remember we have none in the house at present, for it is all eaten; but next week there will be enough and to spare.' `We are much the better for that,' answered Sancho; `but I dare say all these deficiencies will be made up with plenty of eggs and bacon.' `'Fore heaven,' answered the host, `my customer is a choice guesser! I told him I had neither pullets nor hens, and he expects me to have eggs! Talk of other delicacies, but' ask no more for hens.' `Body of me!" quoth Sancho, `let us come to something-tell me in short what you have, Master Host, and let us have done with your flourishes.' `Then,' quoth the inkeeper, `what I really and truly have is a pair of cow-heels, that may be taken for calves' feet; or a pair of calves' feet that are like cow-heels. They are stewed with peas, onions and bacon, and at this very moment are crying out, 'come eat me! come eat me!' 'From this moment I mark them as my own,' quoth Sancho; 'let nobody lay a finger on them. I will pay you well, for there is nothing like them-give me but cow-heel, and I care not a fig for calves' feet.'"--Don Quixote.