Shrimp Salad
Remove shrimps from can, cover with cold or ice water, and let stand twenty minutes. Drain, dry between towels, remove intestinal veins, and break in pieces, reserving six of the finest. Moisten with Cream Dressing II, and arrange on nests of lettuce leaves. Put a spoonful of dressing on each, and garnish with a whole shrimp, capers, and an olive cut in quarters.
A composed salad built on canned shrimp, which in Fannie Farmer's day was the default form outside coastal cities. The technique still works; most of the fussing exists to correct faults of the can.
- The soak is the hingeTwenty minutes in cold or ice water is meant to wash out the tinny, over-brined taste of canned shrimp. If you use fresh or frozen cooked shrimp instead, skip the soak entirely and just chill them dry.
- Canned shrimp todayModern canned shrimp are small and usually already peeled and deveined. The recipe gives no can size or yield; the six reserved whole shrimp are the only clue to how many it serves, so buy to that.
- Intestinal veinThe dark line along the back. On today's canned shrimp it is generally gone; on shrimp you peel yourself, a shallow cut along the curve lifts it out. It is harmless, only gritty.
- Cream Dressing IIA cross-reference to another page of the book: one of the book's cooked dressings, closer to a boiled salad dressing than to mayonnaise. Any thick cooked dressing or a mayonnaise loosened with cream stands in.
- Nests of lettuceCupped outer leaves of iceberg or butterhead, chilled and dried so the dressing does not slide off. Six nests, six reserved whole shrimp: the recipe is written for six servings even though it never says so.
- Drying mattersWater clinging to the shrimp or the leaves will thin the dressing into a puddle within minutes. Dry both thoroughly and dress no more than a few minutes before serving.
- The garnishCapers and quartered olives, as the recipe directs. Rinse capers packed in salt; brined ones can go on straight.
Shrimp salad appears in the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book at a moment when canned seafood had made shellfish a year-round pantry item for inland households. Gulf and Atlantic canneries had been shipping tinned shrimp since the second half of the nineteenth century, and Fannie Farmer's opening line — "remove shrimps from can" — is written without apology or alternative, which tells you how ordinary the tin had become. The remedial handling that follows, the ice-water bath and the drying between towels, suggests early canned shrimp carried a taste of the can. The rest is period presentation: individual lettuce nests, a spoonful of dressing crowning each, one whole shrimp reserved for the top.