No. 540

Shrimp Sauce, Shrimp and Cream Sauce

Sauce aux Crevettes, Sauce aux Crevettes a la Crème

Shrimp Sauce.—Skin half a pound of cooked shrimps; pound their shells with a quarter of a pound of butter, and the juice of one lemon; pass this through a sieve. Cut the shrimps into dice shaped pieces. Boil one pint of white poivrade sauce (No. 522), thicken it with two egg-yolks, and half a gill of fresh cream, and finish with a quarter of a pound of shrimp butter (No. 586), adding a pinch of cayenne pepper, a coffeespoonful of fine herbs, and the pieces of shrimp.

Shrimp and Cream Sauce.—Reduce one pint of bechamel (No. 409) with one gill of mushroom essence (No. 392), and incorporate into this, two ounces of shrimp butter (No. 586), a gill of cream, and two ounces of small dice pieces of shrimps; season with cayenne pepper and serve.

← No. 539 Chopped Sauce Hot Sauces No. 541 Shrimp and Crab Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two related sauces from Ranhofer's cross-referenced system: the first built on a peppery white poivrade and thickened with yolks, the second a straightforward enriched bechamel. Both depend on shrimp butter, which is where all the flavor actually lives.

Do not let the yolk sauce boilOnce the two yolks and cream go into the pint of poivrade, the sauce must be held below a simmer — around 180F — or the yolks curdle and the sauce breaks. Add the shrimp butter off the heat, whisking in cold pieces so it emulsifies rather than melts to oil.
Gill and coffeespoonfulA gill is half a cup, 4 fl oz; half a gill is 2 fl oz — 4 tablespoons, a quarter cup. A coffeespoonful is smaller than a teaspoon — read it as about a quarter teaspoon of chopped fines herbes (parsley, chervil, tarragon, chives).
Shrimp butterNo. 586 appears to be the same operation described here in the first line: pounded shrimp shells worked with butter, then sieved. A food processor does the pounding, but the sieving is not optional — shell fragments are unpleasant. Warm the butter-and-shell paste gently first, then press it through a fine chinois or through cheesecloth.
The lemon juiceJuice of one lemon into a quarter pound of butter is a lot of acid for an emulsion. The recipe puts it in with the pounded shells; if that seems excessive, hold some back and add it to the finished sauce, tasting.
Poivrade and bechamelWhite poivrade (No. 522) is the white version, not the brown poivrade served with game. If you substitute a plain velouté, add cracked white peppercorns and a splash of vinegar or white wine to get the bite the recipe expects.
Mushroom essenceNo. 392 is the concentrated liquor from cooking mushrooms, reduced. A gill of strong mushroom cooking liquid, boiled down from a larger quantity, gives the same effect; commercial mushroom stock is thinner and needs reducing.
Cooked shrimpHalf a pound cooked, in the shell, yields roughly 5 to 6 ounces peeled. Cut them after they are cooked and cooled — dicing raw shrimp and cooking them in the sauce turns them tough. They go in at the last moment, only to warm through.
YieldEach version makes well over a pint — the first, with its quarter pound of butter and the shrimp, closer to a pint and a half. Both are finishing sauces for poached sole, turbot, or a fish quenelle, not something to serve by the ladleful.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and its sauce chapter is essentially a working index: nearly every entry refers you to three or four others by number, so that most recipes assume the surrounding system. Shrimp butter — beurre de crevettes — is the classic French device for extracting flavor from shells that would otherwise be thrown out, and the same technique underlies lobster and crayfish butters used in bisques and in sauce Nantua. The pairing here is instructive: the first sauce is built on a yolk-and-cream liaison, richer and more fragile, while the other takes the simpler bechamel route.