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Tartines of Shrimp, Mrs. Curtiss
Shell one and a half pounds of cooked shrimps and cut them in small pieces. Heat one tablespoon butter in a small saucepan, add one each finely chopped onion and sound green pepper, and brown to a light colour six minutes, then add three tablespoons flour, stir well while heating two minutes, pour in two gills milk and one gill cream. Season with a half teaspoon salt, a saltspoon cayenne pepper, a saltspoon grated nutmeg, a tablespoon Worcestershire sauce and one teaspoon French mustard, then mix well until it comes to a boil. Add the shrimps, with two tablespoons raw rice, half a teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, one-quarter of a bean of finely chopped garlic and the leaves of a branch of chervil; mix well and let gently cook forty-five minutes, occasionally stirring meanwhile. Remove and thoroughly pound it in a mortar, remove from the mortar and press through a sieve into a bowl. Prepare six pieces of toast, quarter-inch thick and three inches square. Trim evenly all around, spread neatly a very little anchovy butter over each, divide the shrimp force and sprinkle evenly a tablespoon finely grated Parmesan cheese over them. Divide a half ounce good butter in little bits over the tartine, place them on a tin, and set to bake in the oven ten minutes, remove, dress on a dish with folded napkin, decorate with six quarters lemon and parsley greens and send to table.
A shrimp forcemeat thickened with béchamel and rice, pounded smooth and baked on toast. Filippini gives no oven temperature and assumes a mortar; both need translating.
- Gills and saltspoonsTwo gills milk is 1 cup, one gill cream is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon, so the cayenne and nutmeg are each a scant quarter-teaspoon.
- The rice is the pointThe rice -- Two tablespoons of raw rice cooked into the sauce for 45 minutes adds body to the paste once sieved, alongside the flour. Do not shorten the simmer or substitute cooked rice; the grains need to break down completely, and the recipe's instruction to stir occasionally matters, or the mixture will catch.
- Mortar and sieveA food processor does the pounding in under a minute. Push the purée through a fine sieve afterwards anyway — the shrimp shreds and pepper skin are what the sieve is for, and skipping it leaves the spread stringy.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Ten minutes to gratinée toast means a hot oven, 425F, or a few minutes under the broiler watching closely.
- A bean of garlic"Bean" most likely renders the French gousse, i.e. a clove. A quarter clove, finely chopped, is all the recipe asks for.
- French mustardSmooth Dijon, not the yellow American kind. Anchovy butter is anchovy paste or mashed fillets worked into softened butter, roughly one part anchovy to four of butter.
- Cooked shrimpA pound and a half in the shell yields well under a pound of meat. If starting from peeled shrimp, use about 3/4 lb, poached briefly — they will cook a further 45 minutes in the sauce and toughen if overdone first.
- YieldSix three-inch tartines, an appetizer or savoury course for six.
The International Cook Book (1906) was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it carries the habit of that trade of naming dishes for the patrons who ordered them — hence "Mrs. Curtiss," a name that tells us nothing about the dish and everything about the kitchen it came from. A tartine is simply a slice of bread with something spread on it; in French service the word covered everything from buttered breakfast bread to the small hot savouries sent out at the end of a formal dinner, which is what this is. The technique underneath — a shellfish forcemeat bound with a rice-thickened béchamel, pounded in a mortar and forced through a sieve — follows the older coulis method, which long predates the food processor.