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Shrimps in Peppers
2 cups cooked shrimps,
Nutmeg fresh or canned
Celery seed
1 tablespoon butter
1 egg
½ teaspoon mustard
½ cup bread-crums
Pepper
6 green peppers
Prepare shrimps as directed. Cut off the stem ends or tops of the peppers, and remove the seeds and veins, and soak the peppers in cold water for one-half hour. Cream the butter by heating and then also beat into it the seasonings and egg. Add the crums, mixing the ingredients well, and finally stirring in the shrimps. Drain the peppers and fill with the prepared stuffing. Set them in a pan, open side up, and bake in a hot oven for twenty minutes.
A simple baked stuffed pepper built on already-cooked shrimp, with seasonings the book leaves to your judgment. The main thing to watch is that the shrimp are cooked before they go in, so the oven time is only there to set the egg and soften the pepper.
- Hot oven"A hot oven" in books of this period is generally taken to mean somewhere around 400-450F. Twenty minutes at that heat is enough to set the egg binder and take the rawness off the pepper.
- Unmeasured seasoningsNutmeg, celery seed and pepper are listed without quantities. A pinch of grated nutmeg, a scant quarter teaspoon of celery seed and pepper to taste suit two cups of shrimp; the half teaspoon of mustard is most likely dry mustard powder, though the recipe does not say.
- "Cream the butter by heating"Soften the tablespoon of butter to the point where it will beat smooth, not melt it to oil. Melted butter will not hold the egg and crumbs in a workable paste.
- CrumsSimply an older spelling of crumbs. Use dry, fine white breadcrumbs; fresh soft crumbs will give a wetter, denser filling and may need a few extra minutes.
- Prepare shrimps as directedThe instruction points back to the book's own basic shrimp entry, which is not on this page. Canned shrimp are best drained and rinsed, as the packing liquid can carry an off note. Whatever you use, the shrimp are already cooked, so twenty minutes is the ceiling before they turn rubbery.
- The pepper soakThe recipe gives no reason for the half hour in cold water. Whatever its purpose, it does not soften the flesh much; if you want peppers fully tender, blanch the hollowed shells in boiling water for three or four minutes and drain them well before filling.
- Keeping them uprightSet the peppers snugly in a small pan or in muffin cups so they cannot tip. A little water in the bottom of the pan, a quarter inch or so, keeps the bases from scorching at this heat.
- YieldSix filled peppers, which serve six as a light course or three as a main dish with bread and salad.
Stuffed green peppers came into American cookbooks in force around the turn of the twentieth century, when bell peppers are often said to have moved from a regional Southern and Southwestern vegetable to something reliably available in Northern markets, and when the vogue for individually served, filled cases of all kinds -- ramekins, timbales, scooped tomatoes, hollowed peppers -- was at its height. The recipe allows either fresh or canned shrimp: shrimp canning was well established on the Gulf Coast by this date and put the shellfish within reach of inland households that would never see a fresh one. That is the logic of the recipe as a whole. It assumes a shelf of tinned goods, a cook who can season without being told how much, and a coal or gas range judged by feel rather than by a thermometer.