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Shrimp Cutlets
(Vaucluse.) CHOP and mince 1 1/2 pounds of freshly boiled shrimps. Melt 2 ounces of butter and add 2 ounces of flour, then 1 cup of boiling cream, also the minced fish. Stir and boil and take off the fire, add the yolks of 3 eggs and a pinch of nutmeg, salt, pepper, and some chopped parsley. Pour into a buttered pan 1/2 inch deep; when cold, cut into shape, dip in egg and crumbs, and fry in boiling lard. Stick a small piece of macaroni, to imitate a bone, at the end of each cutlet and serve with a good sauce, Tartare or Bechamel.
This is a classic croquette panada: a very stiff bechamel bound with yolks, chilled until sliceable, then breaded and fried. The whole dish stands or falls on how firm that base sets.
- The hinge: cook the paste until it leaves the panTwo ounces each of butter and flour to one cup of cream is a thick roux-based paste, and it needs to be boiled and stirred until it pulls cleanly away from the sides of the pan. If it is at all loose going into the tray, the cutlets will slump in the fat no matter how long they are chilled.
- Adding the yolksThe instruction to take the pan off the fire before the yolks go in is deliberate. Beat them in off the heat and work fast; the residual heat of the paste sets them without scrambling.
- How much shrimp"Freshly boiled shrimps" may well mean shell-on weight, in which case a pound and a half yields roughly twelve ounces of picked meat, which suits this quantity of panada. The recipe does not say which is meant; a full pound and a half of picked meat would be harder to bind.
- Chilling"When cold" means thoroughly cold. Spread the mixture half an inch deep, press plastic wrap or buttered paper on the surface, and refrigerate at least three hours or overnight. Cut into small chop or teardrop shapes with a knife or cutter.
- Frying fat and temperature"Boiling lard" means fat hot enough to fry hard; in modern terms that is roughly 350-375F, though the recipe specifies nothing. Lard fries beautifully and is still sold, but any neutral high-smoke-point oil works. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash; two to three minutes, until deep gold, is enough, since everything inside is already cooked.
- BreadingFor a crust that will not split, flour the chilled cutlets lightly, then egg, then fine dry crumbs, and give them a second egg-and-crumb coat if the first looks thin. Rest the breaded cutlets in the refrigerator for half an hour before frying.
- The macaroni boneA short length of dry, uncooked macaroni pushed into the narrow end is purely decorative, a Victorian conceit imitating the rib bone of a lamb cutlet. It is not eaten. A trimmed piece of dried spaghetti or a small parsley stem does the same job.
- Yield and servingExpect about a dozen small cutlets, enough for four as a first course or a light lunch. Tartare suits the fried crust better than bechamel, which repeats the sauce already inside the cutlet.
Croquettes of this kind, built on a stiff panada rather than potato, were the standard way a professional kitchen turned cooked shellfish into a composed dish, and by the turn of the century they had spread from restaurant menus into English and American household books. The shaping into a "cutlet" with a false bone of macaroni belongs to the same nineteenth-century impulse that produced mock turtle soup and mutton dressed as venison: the pleasure lay in the resemblance as much as the flavour. The attribution to Vaucluse places it in Provence, in the department lying north of Marseille. Whether the recipe was eaten in a Vaucluse kitchen or simply acquired there, the technique itself is French culinary orthodoxy of the period.