Home › Fish › Shrimp Salad Sandwich
Shrimp Salad Sandwich
Marinate one cup of shrimps with French dressing; add one-half cup each of chopped olives and pimentos; drain, moisten with mayonnaise dressing, and place on thin slices of lightly buttered white bread, with a crisp lettuce leaf between.
A brief, well-built sandwich filling that depends almost entirely on one step the original mentions in a single word: drain. Two dressings go in, and the sandwich only works if most of the first one comes back out.
- Drain hard, then drain againThe French dressing is a marinade, not a binder. Tip the shrimp and vegetables into a sieve and leave them several minutes, pressing lightly, before the mayonnaise goes in. Oil and vinegar left clinging will thin the mayonnaise and soak the bread within minutes.
- French dressing means vinaigretteIn this period this is oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, roughly three parts to one, whisked or shaken. It is not the sweet orange bottled dressing that took the name in mid-century America.
- ShrimpA cook of the period may well have used canned shrimp, which are small, soft and already salted. Cooked small shrimp, cut into pieces no larger than a pea, give the right texture; large shrimp roll out of the sandwich when bitten.
- PimentosJarred roasted red peppers, packed in brine or water. Blot them dry before chopping, or they contribute their own liquid on top of the marinade.
- OlivesUnspecified; a pitted green olive in brine suits. Chop fine; a half cup each of olives and pimentos against one cup of shrimp is a firmly seasoned filling, and no extra salt is needed.
- Marinating timeFifteen to thirty minutes in the refrigerator is enough. Longer in an acidic dressing turns cooked shrimp mealy and firm.
- AssemblyThe lettuce leaf between filling and bread is a moisture barrier as much as a garnish; use a whole crisp leaf, not shredded. Butter both slices to the edges for the same reason.
- YieldAbout one and a half cups of filling, enough for four to six sandwiches on thin white bread, or a couple of dozen small tea sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Assemble within an hour of serving and keep cold.
Sandwich books proliferated in the first decade of the twentieth century, when the sandwich was moving from a portable working lunch to the centerpiece of the ladies' luncheon and the afternoon tea table, and a whole genre of small volumes appeared to supply variety. Shrimp reached inland American kitchens chiefly in cans, an industry that had grown up along the Gulf Coast in the late nineteenth century, which is why a sandwich like this one asks for a measured cup of shrimp rather than a weight in the shell. Canned pimentos, imported from Spain and later grown in Georgia, arrived in the same era and turn up constantly in period recipes for exactly this reason: sweet red color from a jar, available year-round. The construction here is a salad bound with mayonnaise and shielded from the bread by butter and a lettuce leaf.