Home › Dressing Shell Fish › Dressing Shell Fish (Butter Beat the other butter)
Dressing Shell Fish (Butter Beat the other butter)
of the butter. Beat the other butter in a mortar with some of the spawn; then mix that coloured butter with as much as will be sufficient to cover the pots, and strain it. Cayenne may be added, if approved.
Another Receipt.-Boil them till half done, take out all the meat, &c. (the tail and claws whole). Skin the tail, season it with pepper and salt, mace, and the least possible of nutmeg; bake an hour and half, with butter enough to cover them, having tied them over very closely. When cool, press closely in pots, mixing as much of the liquor they were baked in as will colour it highly; cover the pots when cold with clarified butter. 192. TO POT PRAWNS AND SHRIMPS. - They should be selected as large as possible. When boiled take them out of the skins, and season them with salt, white pepper, and a very little mace and cloves. Press them into a pot, set it in the oven ten minutes, and when cold cover them with a layer of clarified butter. 193. SHRIMP PIE (Excellent). -Pick a quart of shrimps; if they are very salt, season them with only mace and a clove or two. Mince two or three anchovies: mix these with the spice, and then season the shrimps. Put some butter at the bottom of the dish, and cover the shrimps with a glass of sharp white wine. The paste must be light and thin. They do not take long baking. 194. CURRY OF LOBSTERS OR PRAWNS. - Take them from the shells, and lay in a pan, with a small piece of mace, three or four spoonsful of veal gravy, and four of cream; rub smooth one or two tea-spoonsful of curry-powder, a tea-spoonful of flour, and an ounce of butter; simmer an hour; squeeze half a lemon in, and add salt. 195. LOBSTER RISSOLES. - Extract the meat of a boiled lobster, mince it fine as possible, and mix with it the coral pounded smooth, and some yolks of hard-boiled eggs pounded also. Season it with cayenne pepper, powdered mace, and a very little salt. Make a batter of beaten egg, milk, and flour. To each egg allow two large table-spoonsful of milk, and a large tea-spoonful of flour. Beat the batter well, and then mix the lobster with it gradually, till it is stiff enough to make into oval balls, about the size of a large plum. Fry them in the best salad oil, and serve them up either warm or cold. 196. LOBSTER PIE.-Boil two lobsters (or three small), take out the tails, cut them in two, take out the gut, cut each in four pieces, and lay in a small dish, then put in the meat of the claws and that picked out of the body; pick off the furry parts from the latter, and take out the lady; beat the spawn and all the shells in a mortar, and set them on to stew with some water, two or three spoonsful of vinegar, pepper, salt, and some pounded mace: a large piece of butter rolled in flour, must be added when the goodness of the shells is brought out.
A run of shellfish receipts of the mid-nineteenth century: two methods of potting lobster under butter, potted prawns and shrimps, a shrimp pie, a curry, rissoles and the opening of a lobster pie. The potting methods are preservation techniques and should be left alone; the pie, curry and rissoles are ordinary cookery and translate straightforwardly.
- Why the potted receipts fail todaySealing lightly cooked shellfish under a layer of clarified butter creates an oxygen-free environment at the bottom of the pot, which is the condition Clostridium botulinum needs. The book gives no storage temperature and no holding time, and the shrimp are given only ten minutes in the oven before being sealed. Potted shellfish made now is treated as a fresh refrigerated dish eaten within a few days, not as a preserve; follow a current recipe rather than these.
- The bake in receipt twoAn hour and a half is not a doneness instruction: lobster tail is cooked through in a few minutes. The long, closely covered bake under butter appears intended to drive off moisture and soften the meat for pressing hard into pots, rather than to cook it.
- "The lady"An old name for the hard stomach sac behind the eyes of the lobster, discarded along with the feathery gills ("the furry parts"). The soft green tomalley and the red coral, or spawn, were kept and pounded, the coral chiefly for the colour it gives to butter and sauce.
- Spawn and coralOnly hen lobsters carry roe, and it is black-green until cooked, when it turns coral red. Lobsters sold now are often cooked and picked, or sold without roe, so the coloured butter in the first receipt may simply not be possible; a little paprika or tomato paste does the same visual job in a modern sauce.
- A quart of shrimpsA volume measure, most likely of shrimp in the shell before picking; the picked yield would be a good deal less. The instruction "if they are very salt" is consistent with shrimp bought ready-boiled in salted water on the coast, which arrived heavily salted.
- The currySimmering picked lobster or prawn meat for an hour turns it to cotton. Build the sauce first from the veal gravy (a light stock), cream, curry powder and the flour-and-butter, simmer that until it has body, then add the shellfish for two or three minutes at the end. Four spoonfuls of cream means tablespoons.
- RissolesDespite the name these are fritters rather than crumbed croquettes, and the batter needs to be stiff enough to hold a shape. Best salad oil meant olive oil of eating quality, chosen because it was clean-tasting; any neutral oil at 350F works, and the balls need only two or three minutes.
- Pastry and oven"Paste" is pastry, and "light and thin" means rolled fine, though the book does not say whether a short or a puff paste is intended. It gives no oven temperature either, only that they do not take long baking; a fairly hot oven for a short time will brown the crust before the shrimp toughen. "Sharp white wine" is a dry, acidic wine, not a sweet one.