Shrimps
(REAMED SHRIMPS-One pint of shrimps shelled and rinsed; one tablespoon of butter; two tablespoons of flour; two cups of milk. Place the butter in the pan and when melted add the flour, mix until smooth, and add the milk. Place the upper dish in the hot-water dish and when the milk is as thick as cream add the shrimps. When thoroughly heated, add salt and pepper and serve.
A plain white sauce with shrimp folded in, cooked over hot water so the milk cannot catch. The method is sound; only the measures and the shrimp itself need translating.
- A pint of shrimpsThe recipe measures shrimp by volume and asks only that they be shelled and rinsed, which suggests they arrived already cooked. A pint of shelled meat is somewhere around 10-12 oz, which may take rather more than a pound of shell-on shrimp. Small or salad-size shrimp suit the sauce better than jumbo.
- The double boiler"The upper dish in the hot-water dish" is a double boiler. The water beneath should stay at a bare simmer, not a rolling boil, or the sauce scorches at the rim and the shrimp toughen.
- Sauce proportionsOne tablespoon butter to two of flour to two cups milk is a lean, flour-forward binding. For a smoother sauce use equal butter and flour, 2 tablespoons each, to the two cups of milk.
- Cook the flour firstLet the butter and flour bubble together a minute over direct heat before the milk goes in, then add the milk gradually and whisk. Raw flour in a double boiler takes a long time to lose its taste.
- Heating the shrimpAlready-cooked shrimp need only two or three minutes in the hot sauce. Held longer they go rubbery and weep water into the cream. If starting from raw, poach them separately for two minutes and drain before adding.
- Seasoning at the endThe recipe holds the salt and pepper until the shrimp are heated through; taste first, since boiled shrimp may already be salted. Nutmeg or sherry would not be out of place in a creamed dish of this kind.
- Yield and servingServes three or four. Creamed dishes of this sort were commonly sent to table on toast, biscuits, patty shells or rice, though the recipe says only "serve"; it thickens fast off the heat, so serve it straight from the pan.
Creamed dishes on toast were the workhorse of the American middle-class table around 1900, and cookbooks of the Butterick sort -- issued by a pattern company for the same audience that bought its dress patterns -- lean on them heavily. The appeal was economy of both money and attention: a pint of shrimp stretched to feed four, and the double boiler let a cook leave the sauce for a few minutes without ruining it. Shrimp reached inland kitchens in this period chiefly canned or as barreled boiled meat from Gulf and Atlantic fisheries, canning having begun in Louisiana in the later nineteenth century. The same formula, with the shrimp swapped for chipped beef, chicken, eggs or oysters, appears half a dozen times over in books of this era.