The curiosities of food

by P. L. Simmonds

‘The office of shrimps seems to be that analogous to some of the insects on land, whose task is to clear away the remains of dead animal matter after the beasts and birds of prey have been satiated. If a dead small bird or frog be placed where ants can have access to it, those insects will speedily reduce the body to a closely cleared skeleton. The shrimp family, acting in hosts, as speedily remove all traces of fish or flesh from the bones of any dead animal exposed to their ravages. They are, in short, the principal scavengers of the ocean; and, notwithstanding their office, they are highly prized as nutritious and delicious food.’

‘Amongst the shell-fish tribe,’ says a writer in the Caledonian Mercury, ‘the prawn is considered the most delicious, and of course is the most costly. Prawn-fish, which are about double or three times the size of a shrimp, are in general sold at the rate of 1s. per dozen. This high price may be owing to their scarcity, in comparison with the quantity of shrimps sent to market, with a view to give prawn-fishers encouragement to prosecute the trade. The prawn-fish are not what many people suppose, ‘only shrimps of a larger size.’ Their heads and fore-claws are differently marked, showing at once the distinction. The habits of the two fish are also different. The shrimp burrows in the sand, causing fishermen to use trawl-nets for their capture. They are caught in greatest numbers on sandbanks, about the entrance of estuaries. The prawn-fish chiefly locate amongst rocks, and hard bottom, where there is much tangle and sea-weed. The fishermen at Bognor, in Sussex, and some place on the Isle of Wight, catch prawns in wicker-worked baskets, shaped exactly like those wire-worked rat-traps that have the entrance on the top, so that ‘when the rat gets in, it can’t get out again.’ Several hundreds of these baskets baited with any sort of garbage, fish heads, &c., are set amongst the rocks at low water, where they remain until the tide has flown to its full, and again ebbed. The baskets are then overhauled, to see what luck. Prawn-fishing, like every other description of fishing, is not always to be depended on. Some tides, not one prawn may be found in hundreds of baskets; at other times every trap may have secured its victims. From five up to 60, and as high as 70 prawns have at times been taken in one trap. The baskets with which the English fishermen catch lobsters are just of the same shape as the prawn-trap, the only difference being that they are of larger dimensions.’

Immense prawns (Camaroes) are very plentiful at Rio Janeiro. Strangers are often told as a joke, that these are kept in pits, and fed with the dead bodies of slaves, thrown to them from time to time, and many people will in consequence not touch them.

The following instructions for cooking shrimps and prawns may be acceptable in out-of-the-way localities, where they are bought alive from the fishermen:—

‘To dress shrimps and prawns, so that they might at once be tasty and look well to the eye, is considered a very nice point for the cook to perform. A pot, containing a pickle that will nearly float an egg, is put on the fire. When the pickle begins to boil, the prawns (all alive) are put into it, which of course sends the pickle below the boiling point for a time. A brisk fire must be kept up under the pot, and when the pickle again boils up, the prawns are cooked. Should they not be boiled sufficiently, they are as soft as pulp, and if boiled too much, they are hard as horn. The fish are removed from the pot and spread on a table, sprinkling over them a little salt. A cloth is then thrown over the whole, which keeps in the steam. By this operation, the steam melts the salt, and imparts to the prawn that beautiful red and glossy appearance seen on them whilst in the London fishmongers’ shops.’

It might probably be possible to save some of our refuse shrimps, which get too stale to find customers here, and dry them for export to the East, where they are in great demand. The trade in dried shrimps in Siam amounts to 60 tons a year; and they cannot get enough of them to pound up with their rice.

Dried prawns form a considerable article of trade in the Philippines. The Malays and the Siamese, who eat dried prawns and dried mussels, must have very tough stomachs to digest them, and it would take an ostrich’s gizzard, one would suppose, to triturate other tough dried molluscs used, in different localities, such as the Haliotis dried. Thus the ‘pearl womb,’ as the mantle or flesh of the pearl-oyster (Meleagrina margaritifera) is called, is strung and dried, and when cooked with cassia buds is eaten with rice. Numerous minute pearls are often found in this substance (as is sometimes the case with the common oyster) during mastication.

There is scope enough to be found for drying this mollusc, when a government pearl fishery is on at Ceylon, for then millions of pearl-oysters are thrown on the shore, after being opened, and left there to rot.

Under the name of Balachong or gnapee, there is a mess made in Burmah, Sumatra, &c., of prawns, shrimps, or any cheap fish, pounded into a consistent mass, and frequently allowed to become partially putrid. It is largely used by the natives as a condiment to their rice, as no vegetable food is deemed palatable without it; and a considerable trade is carried on with it, its use extending to every country from China to Bengal.

In all populous cities there is great consumption of oysters, both of the large common kinds termed ‘scuttlemouths’ by the venders, and of the more expensive and small delicate fed ‘native.’ Even the mangrove or tree oyster is esteemed in the tropics. One hundred or two hundred of these parasitic oysters may often be found on a single bough, pendent in the water, in the rivers of Africa, or the West Indies.