No. 2647

Shrimp Salad

Salade de Crevettes

Skin the shrimps, already cooked in unsalted water, season them with salt, pepper, oil and vinegar, and serve them in a salad bowl on top of lettuce leaves, and sprinkle over some chopped parsley; lay a lettuce head on top, or, if preferred, when the shrimps are dressed, cover them with a mayonnaise sauce (No. 606), and instead of laying them in the salad bowl they may be set inside a border made as follows: Coat a border mold (Fig. 470) with some clear jelly (No. 103), decorate it through a cornet with lobster butter and Montpellier butter (No. 580), then fill it up with whipped jelly. Unmold and surround it with quartered hard-boiled eggs, and garnish the inside of the border with some seasoned lettuce; on top of this lay the seasoned shrimps in a pyramid, and sprinkle some chopped parsley over them; set on the summit a lettuce heart, and serve a mayonnaise sauce (No. 606) separately.

COOKED VEGETABLE SALADS (Salades de Legumes Cuits).

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer gives two dishes here: a plain dressed shrimp salad that takes ten minutes, and a jellied border presentation that is a half-day project. Read the first sentence as the recipe and everything after "or, if preferred" as optional architecture.

No quantities givenThis entry leaves amounts to the cook. As a rough guide for four as a first course, figure 1 lb peeled cooked shrimp, 3 tablespoons oil to 1 tablespoon vinegar, and two heads of soft lettuce, one of them kept whole for the top.
"Skin the shrimps"This means peel them. Ranhofer assumes whole shrimp boiled in the shell; the shells help keep the flesh from waterlogging and add flavour.
Unsalted waterRanhofer specifies it but gives no reason; the shrimp are seasoned after cooking. Cook them 2 to 3 minutes in plain simmering water until just opaque, then cool at once; shrimp held past that turn woolly.
Dress at the last momentOil and vinegar will in time firm and dull cooked shrimp, so season immediately before assembling rather than letting the salad stand.
The cross-referenced numbersNo. 606 is Ranhofer's mayonnaise, made with raw yolk and oil; No. 103 is the clear jelly; No. 580 is the Montpellier butter. Any good mayonnaise and a firm aspic or fish-stock gelatine will stand in.
Montpellier and lobster buttersMontpellier butter is butter pounded with blanched herbs, spinach, anchovy, capers and shallot, coloured deep green; lobster butter is butter worked with pounded lobster shell and coral and strained, giving coral pink. Both are piped through a paper cornet purely as decoration inside the mould, so they must be firm but pipeable.
Whipped jellyAspic beaten over ice until it is opaque and mousse-like, roughly the consistency of soft whipped cream. Beat too early and it stays liquid; too late and it sets into lumps that will not fill the mould cleanly.
The border mouldA ring mould. Coat it with a thin layer of jelly set against ice, decorate, set the decoration with more jelly, then fill. Unmould by dipping the outside in warm water for a few seconds and inverting onto a chilled platter.
ServingThe plain version is a light first course or luncheon dish. The jellied border, surrounded by quartered hard-boiled eggs with mayonnaise passed separately, is a buffet centrepiece and will serve considerably more.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows a pattern common in the book: a simple dish stated in one line, then the same dish rebuilt as a display piece for a formal table. The jellied border with piped compound butters belongs to the cold-kitchen work of the period, when a dish of this kind was judged partly on how it was presented; a shrimp salad set in a decorated aspic ring, garnished with egg and topped with a lettuce heart, was made to be carried out whole rather than plated. The surrounding section headings distinguish salads of cooked ingredients from those of raw greens, a classification now largely abandoned.