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Escalloped Shrimps
One and one-half pint of shelled shrimps; one pint of boiling water; one-half pint of grated bread crumbs; three tablespoons of butter; one generous teaspoon of salt; one-eighth teaspoon of cayenne; one teaspoon of mustard; one teaspoon of lemon juice; two tablespoons of flour. Put the butter in a saucepan and beat it to a cream. Add the flour and mustard and beat until light. Gradually pour the hot liquid on this. Place the saucepan on a fire, and stir the contents until they begin to boil. Now add the lemon juice and half the salt and pepper and cook for six minutes, after which stir in the shrimps. Turn the mixture into a shallow escallop dish that will hold about one quart; cover with the grated bread crumbs and dot with the half tablespoon of butter broken into little bits. Bake for twenty minutes in a rather hot oven.
A straightforward gratin: a mustard-sharpened white sauce, cooked shrimp, crumbs on top. The original's arithmetic is a little loose, and the bake time is the one thing worth adjusting.
- Shrimp, and how muchA pint and a half of shelled shrimps is a volume measure, something like a pound of peeled cooked shrimp. The method (they go in at the end, after the sauce is made) suggests they are already cooked; raw shrimp will cook through in the sauce and oven but should be cut into pieces if large.
- The butter does not add upThree tablespoons go into the roux, then the method calls for "the half tablespoon of butter" on top, which was never listed. Hold back about a half tablespoon from the three for dotting the crumbs, or simply add it as extra.
- Mustard means dry mustardA teaspoon of mustard beaten into the butter with the flour is almost certainly mustard powder rather than prepared mustard, which would loosen the roux at this quantity.
- PepperCayenne is listed among the ingredients but the method says "salt and pepper." Use the eighth teaspoon of cayenne, half in the sauce and half held back, and season at the end.
- Boiling water, or betterA pint of plain boiling water makes a thin, bland sauce with only two tablespoons of flour. Shrimp shell stock, or half milk and half water, gives the dish more to stand on.
- A rather hot ovenRoughly 400-425F. The dish is shallow and the contents are already hot when it goes in, so the heat is there to brown the crumbs, not to cook anything through.
- Cut the baking timeTwenty minutes at that heat will make cooked shrimp tight and rubbery. Ten to fifteen minutes, until the crumbs are brown and the sauce bubbles at the edge, is enough.
- Crumbs and dish"Grated bread crumbs" are made by grating dry stale bread, coarser and more open than commercial fine crumbs; panko is the nearest thing on a shelf. An escallop dish is any shallow one-quart gratin dish.
- YieldServes four as a main course with bread, or six as a first course.
Escalloped or scalloped dishes — anything bound in a sauce, crumbed and browned in a shallow dish — were the standard American answer to what to do with cooked seafood. The Butterick Cook Book came from the pattern and magazine publisher Butterick, part of a wave of household manuals aimed at middle-class women running kitchens without much help, which may be why the instructions are so exact about beating the butter and flour to a cream. A dish like this one — where everything is chopped into sauce and covered with crumbs — forgives shrimp of uneven quality better than most.