Prawn Cocktails

Oyster cocktails were all the rage in the 1920s but it wasn't long before other types of seafood joined the party - lobster, prawn, crab, prawn and crab, oyster and crab - all with zingy cocktail sauces. Interestingly, the Australian Women's Weekly Original Cookbook from 1970 gives much the same recipe for cocktail sauce as the Sydney Morning Herald did back in the 1920s: tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, Tabasco, salt and whipped cream. I changed the Weekly's recipe by using half mayonnaise and half cream, but probably should have kept it as it was and whipped the cream for texture. Any type or size of prawn would do, but Tiger prawns are sweet and juicy and medium ones are bite size.

Prawn Cocktails

750g cooked medium Tiger prawns
1/4 iceberg lettuce, shredded
lemon slices

Cocktail Sauce
2 tbsp tomato sauce
2 teasp Worcestershire sauce
2 teasp lemon juice or vinegar
6 drops Tabasco sauce 
1 tbsp fresh cream and 1 tbsp mayonnaise (or 2 tbsp cream, lightly whipped)
Salt, cayenne


Shell and de-vein the prawns. Combine all cocktail sauce ingredients; mix well. If using whipped cream, mix the other ingredients, season, and then fold in the cream. Line cocktail glasses with shredded lettuce, top with prawns and spoon over cocktail sauce. Serve with brown bread and butter and lemon slices. Serves 4.

Episode 6 - Ruddy Gore

For a while there I thought the Ritz French Cafe didn't exist, but in 1928 it was located at 110 Lonsdale Street, the site of Melbourne's famous Fasoli's Restaurant and Wine Bar. In the early 1900s Fasoli's was the centre of the city's literary and artistic life, with regulars including writers, poets, art critics and its own Queen of Bohemia.

"The rendezvous of connoisseurs", according to its advertising, the Ritz offered 5-course lunches and 7-course dinners and was licensed to sell Australian wines (Seppelt's).

So will it be Phryne's apres-theatre French supper at the Ritz with Ruddigore's leading man, Gwilym Evans, or her dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Little Bourke Street with her lover, Lin Chung? Steak and mushrooms, or crab with ginger, salt and pepper squid and lemon chicken? Pavlova and apple pie, or almond soup? Or Mrs B's home-cooked dinner of "excellent bouillion", fricasee of veal and apple crumble with cream. Or the lamb chops and pommes duchesse enjoyed on another night in?

I'm tempted to mix it all together - salt and pepper squid, lamb chops with pommes duchesse, passionfruit pavlova. A pity that Phryne has yet to encounter the duck spring roll.


Prawn Cocktails

Crumbed Lamb Cutlets with Pommes de Terre Duchesse and Peas

Passionfruit Pavlova