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Shrimp Sauce
Skin a tumbler of shrimps, boil skins in a tumbler of water; strain this water in two-thirds tumbler butter previously rubbed into a heaped table-spoon flour, simmer a few minutes, add shrimps finely chopped, let stew until done. Little cooking is needed; salt, pepper and catsup to taste. A good fish sauce.
A shell-stock butter sauce for boiled or baked fish, written in the compressed shorthand of the period. Two things matter: the shell broth is the whole point of the dish, and the chopped shrimp go in at the very end.
- What a tumbler holdsA tumbler in nineteenth-century American cookbooks is usually reckoned at about a half pint, roughly 1 cup, though the book does not define it. On that reading: 1 cup peeled shrimp, 1 cup water, and about two-thirds cup butter.
- "Skin" means peelPeel the shrimp and keep every shell, head and tail. Those are what get simmered in the water; the broth they give up is the only shrimp flavour in the sauce base.
- Simmer the shells, do not boil them hardSimmer the shells -- The recipe says boil; ten to fifteen minutes is enough to draw out colour and flavour. Strain it well; a fine sieve or a cloth is worth the trouble.
- The butter quantity is period-richTwo-thirds cup of butter to one cup of stock gives a sauce closer to a loose butter emulsion than a modern veloute. Half that butter makes something a contemporary table will find easier, though the sauce will be thinner and less glossy.
- It is a roux, made in an odd orderIt is a butter-and-flour paste, not a cooked roux -- Rub the flour into the softened butter to a paste, then work the strained stock into it and simmer a few minutes to cook out the raw flour taste.
- "Let stew until done" is the trapThe shrimp meat needs perhaps two minutes in the hot sauce, no more. The original's own hedge, "little cooking is needed," is the instruction to follow; anything approaching a real stew leaves the shrimp rubbery.
- Which catsupIn the 1880s this could be tomato, mushroom or walnut catsup. Mushroom or walnut gives the savoury, slightly sharp lift the recipe is after; a modern sweetened tomato ketchup will make the sauce taste of ketchup. A spoonful at a time, tasting as you go.
- YieldThe quantities given (a cup of stock, two-thirds cup butter and a cup of chopped shrimp) make a generous amount of sauce, enough for several servings of poached, baked or fried white fish.
Shrimp sauce belongs to a family of English butter-and-flour fish sauces, lobster, oyster, anchovy and shrimp among them, that crossed into American cookbooks and settled comfortably in the coastal South. The technique of simmering the discarded shells for a broth is older than the recipe and is the same thrift that produced bisques and shrimp butters. The direction to finish with catsup to taste is a reminder that catsup at this date was a category, not a product, and a cook would have had a bottle of mushroom or walnut on the shelf as readily as tomato.