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Croustade of Shrimps
Follow the recipe for Creamed Shrimps a serve the dish in individual cases or croustades of rice. 1 T
This is a serving variation rather than a standalone recipe: it sends you to the book's Creamed Shrimps and asks only that the sauce be presented in an edible case. The trailing "1 T" is a fragment of the next entry and should be ignored.
- What a croustade is hereIn Butterick-era usage a croustade is a hollow case made to hold a creamed mixture — most often fried bread, puff pastry, or, as here, moulded cooked rice that is shaped, coated and fried or baked until it holds together. It is a vessel, not a filling.
- Rice cases in practiceUse a short or medium-grain rice cooked soft and sticky, seasoned and bound while still hot so it moulds cleanly. Cool the shapes thoroughly before frying or they collapse; chilling an hour firms them enough to handle.
- "Individual cases"The alternative offered is simply a small individual dish or mould; the recipe does not specify its material or size, and the yield depends on the quantity given in the book's Creamed Shrimps.
- The hinge: do not overcook the shrimpWhatever the case, the shrimp should go into the finished cream sauce and be heated only until warmed through, two minutes at most; prolonged simmering turns shellfish firm and dry.
- Assemble at the last momentA rice croustade begins to soften as soon as the sauce is in it. Fill after the cases and sauce are both hot and ready, and send the dish straight to the table.
- Shrimp of the periodSmall canned or already-boiled shrimp were commonly used in this period, and the base recipe appears to take a cooked ingredient for granted. Modern raw shrimp needs a brief poach or sauté first; frozen cooked shrimp should simply be thawed and folded in off the heat.
- Season the sauce sharplyWhite sauce against bland rice benefits from assertive seasoning; salt, cayenne or paprika, a little lemon and a spoonful of sherry are all seasonings often met with in creamed shellfish of this style.
Creamed shellfish served in a pastry or bread case was one of the most useful formulas in an American kitchen: it stretched an expensive ingredient, could be assembled from cooked leftovers, and looked like restaurant food. The word *croustade* comes through French from the Italian *crostata*, from *crosta*, a crust, and in nineteenth-century cookery it named any crisp edible container hat is, fried bread, pastry, hominy, potato, or rice. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, issued its cook book to the same audience of home-managing women who bought its magazines, and this kind of entry works by giving one base recipe, then a short list of variations differing only in presentation, so a cook could produce a plain family supper or a company dish from the same saucepan.