It's May 10, which is ... checking the food holidays calendar ... National Shrimp Day! So I will drag out my doorstop-sized Wise Encyclopedia of Cookery (Wm. Wise & Co., Inc., 1971) to see what delights it recommends.
It shrimp-ifies some of the most popular old-school family dinner recipes, like chicken à la king.
I have a feeling the editors did not modernize this edition of the cookbook as much as the cover would lead one to believe, as the recipe calls for "top milk or cream," and it would have been hard to find the un-homogenized version that would have top milk by 1971.
There's also a chow mein, of course, with shrimp joining the celery, onions, and canned water chestnuts or bean sprouts over that late '60s/ early '70s staple of fried noodles.
There's a shrimp loaf, for those nights during Lent when the family would rebel if they had to eat salmon patties again, but making crispy fried shrimp would seem too decadent.
It's closer to a shrimp-and-celery-flavored mashed potatoes than a more traditional protein-stretched-with-crackers loaf, but at least it's something different.
There's also a shrimp pie--
... less a traditional pie and more of a strata of shrimp, corn, and buttered crackers baked in cream.
For those who want a bit of spice with their shrimp, there's the promisingly-named Minced Shrimp Louisiana.
They'll probably be disappointed that it's mostly just canned cream of tomato soup with the titular minced shrimp and a dash of cayenne (likely so small as to be undetectable).
And if May 10 is too hot, you can always celebrate National Shrimp Day with that most vintage concoction of all: an aspic.
At least this uses plain (rather than fruit-flavored) gelatin, and it too flirts with being spicy by calling for an entire drop of Tabasco sauce. (Don't worry! There's a water cress and chive mayonnaise sauce to cool things down if they get too spicy. 😄)
I hope you enjoyed this all-you-care-to-read vintage shrimp recipe buffet! And you don't even have to tip anybody for taking your plates away.
Mentioning shrimp for lent reminds me of someone I knew who gave up meat for lent but was still allowed to have seafood. I think that it was really an excuse to eat a lot of shrimp while pretending that giving up meat is a hardship.
ReplyDeleteSeafood is definitely still allowed for Lent. Beaver is even considered a fish for Lent! https://www.salon.com/2023/02/25/the-strange-history-of-how-the-catholic-church-declared-beaver-to-be-a-fish--at-least-during-lent/
DeleteYou're right that a lot of people don't seem to take the "deprivation" part too seriously.