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Forcemeat of Shrimps
Take two or three breakfast cupfuls of shrimps, remove the shells, chop them up into very fine pieces and add an equal quantity of breadcrumbs, a little mace, and salt and pepper. Put this in a mortar and pound it with about three ounces of butter into a firm paste. Add the yolk of an egg to form the mixture into a smooth paste and use it for stuffing a fish to be baked.
A stuffing, not a standalone dish: the whole point is that it goes inside a whole fish before baking. A food processor does in thirty seconds what the mortar was for.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup, roughly 8 to 10 fluid ounces. Note that the recipe measures the shrimps before shelling, so two to three cupfuls in the shell yields appreciably less than that once peeled.
- The shrimp Oscar meantThe shrimp meant here -- Small cooked shrimp give the firm, dry texture the recipe assumes; raw shrimp will release more water and loosen the paste.
- BreadcrumbsUse dry fine crumbs rather than fresh soft ones. An equal quantity of fresh crumbs weighs far less and the paste will not hold together as a firm plug of stuffing.
- ButterThree ounces is 6 tablespoons, and it should be soft, not melted. Melted butter separates out during pounding and leaves the forcemeat greasy.
- Mortar to processorPulse the shrimp, crumbs and butter in short bursts and stop while some texture remains. Run it long and you get a smooth pink pâté rather than a forcemeat, which was not the intention.
- MaceMace is the outer covering of the nutmeg seed, milder and more floral. "A little" here means about 1/4 teaspoon ground for this quantity; it is easy to overdo and will dominate the shrimp.
- Yield and the fishThis makes a generous quantity, enough for a large whole fish and probably more besides. Pack the cavity loosely and secure with skewers or a few stitches.
- DonenessStuffed whole fish cooks slower than an empty one. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits it; check that the centre of the stuffing, not just the flesh, reaches 145F.
Forcemeat, from the French farce (a stuffing) by way of the older English "farced meat," was a foundation of nineteenth-century professional cooking: a pounded, bound paste of fish, poultry or veal used for stuffing, quenelles and garnishes. This shrimp version belongs to the standard hotel repertoire Oscar Tschirky assembled at the Waldorf in the 1890s, where a whole baked fish was expected to arrive stuffed. The recipe also reflects how shrimp reached city kitchens then: small, boiled, and measured by the cupful rather than by weight.