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Boiled Prawns
Place a pint of prawns, previously thoroughly washed, into a saucepan with enough water to cover them, adding salt in the proportion of one-quarter pound to each gallon of water; set the pan on a quick fire, and boil for eight minutes, skimming frequently; then remove, drain on a sieve, and serve artistically arranged, interspersed with parsley.
A plain court-bouillon-free boil that depends entirely on salt concentration and timing. The salt is right; the eight minutes is not, for anything you will buy today.
- The hinge: timeEight minutes is long by modern standards. Shell-on shrimp of 16-25 count are done in 2-3 minutes, jumbos in 3-4 — pull them the moment the shells turn opaque coral and the bodies curl into a loose C. A tight O means overcooked.
- A pint of prawnsMeasured by volume rather than weight. A pint of shell-on shrimp runs roughly 12 to 16 ounces, near enough a pound, serving two as a first course or four in a salad.
- The salt proportionA quarter pound to the gallon is roughly a scant 1/3 to 1/2 cup of table salt, or nearer a cup of a fine-flaked coarse kosher salt (brands vary widely by volume) — near 3 percent, close to seawater. This is the part of the recipe worth keeping exactly; it seasons the flesh through the shell.
- "A quick fire"High heat. Note that the original starts the prawns in the water rather than dropping them into a boil; if you prefer to add them to already-boiling water, add them all at once so the pot recovers quickly.
- SkimmingThe grey foam is coagulated protein leaching from the shells. Skimming it keeps the shells clean-looking, which matters if they are going to the table in their shells as Oscar intended.
- Draining, and coolingDraining on a sieve lets carryover heat keep cooking them. If they are to be served cold, spread them in a single layer or drop them into ice water for a minute, then drain again and chill.
- Prawn or shrimpIn American kitchens of this period the two words were used more or less interchangeably for the larger sizes. Buy shell-on shrimp; head-on if you can get them, since the heads are what makes the arrangement look like anything.
- Serving"Artistically arranged" is all the original says; the parsley is the only garnish specified. Lemon or a mayonnaise-based sauce would not be out of place.
Oscar Tschirky was the Waldorf's maitre d'hotel, and the 1896 cook book compiled under his name is less a home manual than a working record of what a large hotel kitchen turned out — its entries are terse professional notes rather than teaching recipes. Boiled prawns are the sort of dish often associated with the cold buffet and the raw bar, the same corner of the menu as oysters on the half shell and lobster in aspic, though the recipe itself establishes nothing about how they were priced or where the shrimp came from. The instruction to serve them "artistically arranged, interspersed with parsley" is the whole point of the dish in a hotel context — the cooking is a two-line technical problem, and the presentation is the product.