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Shrimps with Mayonnaise
Shell one and a half pounds cooked fresh shrimps and place in a bowl. Season with three tablespoons salad dressing. Mix well in seasoning. Garnish sides of a compotier dish with well washed and drained (cold) lettuce leaves. Dress shrimps in centre, dome-like, then spread a mayonnaise over the shrimps, sprinkle teaspoon capers over all, arrange two cold hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters around the bottom against the shrimps and serve.
A cold composed salad that depends almost entirely on the shrimp being properly cooked and thoroughly chilled. Two different dressings are used, and the distinction matters.
- Two dressings, not oneThe "salad dressing" that seasons the shrimp in the bowl is a separate preparation from the mayonnaise spread over the finished dome. In books of this period "salad dressing" usually means a thin vinaigrette of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, though some writers used the term for a cooked or boiled dressing. Using mayonnaise for both steps gives a heavy, pasty result.
- CompotierA footed glass or porcelain dish, the sort used for stewed fruit. Any shallow pedestal bowl or a wide, slightly deep serving plate does the job.
- Quantity of shrimpA pound and a half of shell-on shrimp yields somewhere between about 12 oz and 1 lb 4 oz shelled, depending on whether the shrimp are head-on or headless. Reckon on four servings as a first course; if you buy already-peeled shrimp, a pound is about right.
- Cooking the shrimpMedium shrimp need 2 to 3 minutes in salted simmering water, until just opaque and curled into a loose C. Boiled on until firmly curled into a tight O, they go dry and cottony. Cool them at once in ice water.
- Everything coldThe shrimp, the lettuce and the dressing should all be refrigerator-cold before assembly. Lettuce must be dried properly, not merely drained, or the water thins the mayonnaise and pools in the dish.
- CapersRinse brined capers and blot them, or the whole surface tastes of the jar. A teaspoon over the top is a garnish, not a seasoning.
- Mayonnaise and raw eggHomemade mayonnaise here is not cooked and is served cold. If you are serving anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised, use pasteurised eggs or a good commercial mayonnaise.
- Assembly orderBuild the dome, coat it, then set the egg quarters around the base last. Eggs placed first will be knocked out of line while you shape the shrimp.
This reads as hotel and restaurant cookery written down for domestic use: the vocabulary suggests as much, from the compotier to the instruction to "dress" the shrimp in the centre, dome-like. Shrimp with mayonnaise, built into a mound, ringed with lettuce and quartered hard-boiled eggs, was a familiar cold entree on American and European menus in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the pattern is the same one behind lobster and crab salad of the era. Mayonnaise is here treated as a preparation distinct from "salad dressing." Cold shrimp on this scale also depended on the growth of commercial ice and on shrimp shipped inland, canned and iced, from the Gulf and South Atlantic fisheries.