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Indian Puffs
(England.) Pick and chop finely 1 pint of freshly boiled shrimps, add a tablespoonful of butter and a teaspoonful of curry powder, and as much cream or white stock as will make it a smooth paste. Roll sufficient pie-crust very thin, cut into 4-inch squares, fill with this, fold in triangles, and fry them in boiling fat. Serve on a napkin garnished with parsley.
CRABS (as cooked in Marseilles.) Boil, pick, and chop into dice 6 large crabs, fry in 2 ounces of butter with 1 tablespoonful of minced onion, 1 ounce flour, 1 green pepper, free from seed, and 4 pods of ochra, all cut into dice, add some parsley, 1 cup of white stock, and 2 tablespoonfuls of white wine. Cook 20 minutes, season to taste, and serve with a border of boiled rice.
Two separate dishes share this page: a fried shrimp turnover from England and a crab sauté from Marseilles. Both are built on shellfish that has already been cooked, which is the thing that most affects the timings.
- A pint of shrimpsThe recipe says to pick and chop the pint, so this may be a pint of shrimps in the shell rather than of picked meat; either way expect somewhere in the region of 12 oz of peeled shrimp, from perhaps 1½ lb in the shell. Small cold-water shrimp are the likely intent; chopped larger shrimp work but give a coarser paste.
- White stockA pale, unbrowned veal or chicken stock. Unsalted low-sodium chicken stock is the practical stand-in; reduce it slightly if it tastes thin, since in the puffs it is doing the work of binding rather than moistening.
- Curry powderCommercial curry powders of this period were generally milder and more turmeric-forward than many blends sold now, though strengths varied by maker. A teaspoon of a modern hot blend will dominate this quantity of shrimp -- start with half and taste the filling before it goes into the pastry.
- Sealing the puffsThe recipe says fold into triangles and says nothing about closing them. Brush the edges with water or egg white and press firmly, or the filling escapes into the fat. Chilling the filled triangles for 20 minutes before frying helps them hold.
- Boiling fatMeaning deep fat at frying temperature, 375F. Below that the thin crust absorbs grease; above it the pastry colours before it cooks through. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Serve on a napkinA period convention: a folded linen napkin on the platter absorbed frying fat. A rack, then a paper-lined dish, does the same job. Figure about a dozen 4-inch puffs from this quantity, enough for six as a first course.
- OchraOkra. Four pods diced is a small amount, used here for body rather than flavour; it will thicken the cup of stock slightly along with the ounce of flour.
- Six large crabsDepending on species this yields roughly 1½ to 2 lb of picked meat. If you are buying it picked, that is the target — the recipe is generous, and the sauce quantities suit it.
- The twenty minutesThe crab is already cooked. Build the sauce first — onion, flour, pepper and okra in the butter, then stock and wine — and give it most of the twenty minutes on its own; fold the diced crab in for the last five so it does not turn to shreds.
With a Saucepan Over the Sea collected dishes from around Europe and beyond for American cooks, and the pairing on this page shows how loosely national labels were applied. The turnovers are called Indian Puffs and credited to England, which is exactly right: curry powder was an Anglo-Indian invention, a shop-bought blend sold in Britain from the late eighteenth century onward, so a curried shrimp or lobster filling belongs to English cookery rather than to anything Indian. The Marseilles crab is the more surprising entry, since okra and green pepper point at least as much toward the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean as toward Provence ",birthplace in such a book is best read as an attribution rather than a fact.