Breezed past me on Facebook this morning, this Benjamin Schwartz cartoon (from the 5/6/19 issue of the New Yorker) that made me laugh out loud at its absurdity:
(#1) So festive! Transform any cocktail, in any kind of cocktail glass (the one in the cartoon is a coupe /kup/, a good glass for, say, a daiquiri), into a shrimp cocktail, by hanging some shelled, chilled cooked shrimp (such as anyone might just happen to have a pocketful of on them — this is where I dissolved in laughter) all around the lip of the glass
Even better: the classic shrimp cocktail is already an antic hors d’œuvre, a preposterously elaborate presentation of shrimp, sauce, and sourness (most often, from a lemon slice) that might have been served more simply on a tasty bit of bread, or in a small bowl or cup. With a name — shrimp cocktail — that’s a pun.
So what we see in #1 is in fact goofy-squared.
(There’s a Page on this blog about my postings on Benjamin Schwartz cartoons.)
Drink cocktails and food cocktails. From NOAD, sense 1a vs. sense 2:
noun cocktail: 1 [a] an alcoholic drink consisting of a spirit or several spirits mixed with other ingredients, such as fruit juice, lemonade, or cream: a champagne cocktail | [as modifier]: a cocktail party. [b] [AZ: a metaphor] a mixture of substances or factors, especially when dangerous or unpleasant in its effects: a cocktail of drugs with severe side effects | financial pressure plus isolation can be a deadly cocktail for some people. 2 [AZ: a metaphor] a dish consisting of small pieces of food [AZ: especially seafood], typically served cold at the beginning of a meal as an appetizer [AZ: traditionally, in a cocktail glass]: a chilled lobster cocktail prettily presented in a martini glass.
Shrimp cocktail notes. From Wikipedia (slanted towards British terminology and customs):
Prawn cocktail, also known as shrimp cocktail, is a seafood dish consisting of shelled, cooked prawns in a Marie Rose sauce or cocktail sauce, served in a glass [AZ: classically, a martini glass]. It was the most popular hors d’œuvre in Great Britain, as well as in the United States, from the 1960s to the late 1980s. According to the English food writer Nigel Slater, the prawn cocktail “has spent most of (its life) see-sawing from the height of fashion to the laughably passé” and is now often served with a degree of irony.
The cocktail sauce is essentially ketchup and mayonnaise in Commonwealth countries, or ketchup and horseradish in the United States. Recipes may add Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, vinegar, cayenne pepper or lemon juice.
Shrimp cocktail art. Normally, I would have inserted a photo of a shrimp cocktail from a food site into the notes above. But today I have, instead, a fortuitous find that’s even better: art, glorious art. I offer you Mary Ellen Johnson’s photorealist painting Shrimp Cocktail on Black:
(#2) Mary Ellen Mansfield Johnson (born 1967) is a “precision realist” painter of food — often startling hyper-real images
From her website:
My work stirs visceral and psychological impulses. It evokes nostalgia, and an intrinsic yearning for gratification. The food communicates a visual language that crosses the barriers of different cultures, for food is a universal experience.
Well, not shrimp cocktail in particular, but food in general.
May 22, 2024 at 5:07 pm |
From Mike Pope on Facebook:
May 23, 2024 at 6:14 am |
I wonder if this was partly inspired by the notion, promulgated by bars everywhere, that you can call any drink a martini as long as you serve it in a conical glass.