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Buttered Prawns
Remove from their shells three breakfast cupfuls of prawns, and dredge over them salt and pepper to taste, place them in a saucepan and pour over them two breakfast cupfuls of good rich gravy, and add a small lump of butter, well-kneaded with flour, to thicken it. Then place the pan at the side of the fire, and simmer gently for five to six minutes, after which, turn the prawns out on to a dish and serve.
A short dish that depends almost entirely on two things the original leaves unexplained: what the gravy is and whether the prawns arrive raw or already boiled. Settle both before you turn on the heat.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup, roughly 8 to 10 fluid ounces, so read the measures as about 3 cups of shelled prawns to 2 cups of gravy. Three cups of shelled prawns means starting with roughly 2 lb in the shell.
- Raw or already cookedPrawns of this period were often sold already boiled, and reheating those for five or six minutes will make them tough and dry. If yours are already cooked, they want about two minutes in the hot sauce, no more; the full five to six minutes suits raw prawns.
- "Good rich gravy"Probably not simply pan drippings from a roast; in a kitchen of this kind it would more likely have been a reduced brown sauce or a fish veloute, already seasoned and strained. A concentrated shellfish or fish stock reduced and enriched is the closest home equivalent; use the prawn shells for it rather than throwing them out.
- Butter kneaded with flourThis is beurre manie: equal weights soft butter and flour worked to a paste, whisked into the hot liquid in small pieces. A "small lump" for 2 cups of sauce is on the order of a tablespoon each of butter and flour, which gives a light thickening rather than a heavy one.
- Side of the fireOn a coal range the side of the firebox was the cooler zone. Read it as a bare simmer over low heat, with the sauce never at a rolling boil, which would toughen the prawns.
- Seasoning orderThe salt and pepper go on the prawns before the sauce, so taste the finished gravy again at the end. A reduced brown sauce is already salty and can easily go over.
- Yield and servingEnough for about four as a first course or a light supper dish. Dishes of this kind were often served over toast or with rice, both of which absorb the sauce; served bare on a plate it pools.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf, and his 1896 Cook Book collects both hotel practice and the domestic English cookery that fashionable American tables still leaned on. Dishes of shellfish reheated in a rich thickened sauce were staples of English supper and savoury courses through the nineteenth century, and their close relatives include buttered lobster, buttered crab and the potted shellfish of an earlier generation. The vocabulary here leans English — "cupfuls" and "the side of the fire" are range-and-teacup measures more at home in British books than American ones, and "prawns" rather than "shrimps" points the same way — though that is a suggestion of source rather than proof of it. Thickening at the last moment with butter kneaded into flour, rather than starting from a roux, suited sauces meant to be made quickly to order.