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To Stew Prawns, Shrimps, or Cray Fish

A stew of prawns, shrimps, or crayfish simmered with wine, vinegar, and spices, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Stew Prawns, Shrimps, or Cray Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Remove the meat from the shells of the prawns, shrimps, or crayfish.

  2. Bruise the shells and place them in a pot with white wine, water, vinegar, salt, pepper, and mace.

  3. Stew the mixture for 30 minutes, then strain it.

Make the stew

  1. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter, then add grated nutmeg and the seafood.

  2. Heat thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Toast a slice of thin bread, remove the crust, and cut it into six pieces.

  2. Arrange the bread on a dish and pour the stewed seafood over it.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps flour form a smooth, thickened sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stock made from the shells.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour and butter. Cooking flour in butter before adding liquid helps prevent lumps and gives a smooth, even thickness to the sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, vinegar, pepper, flour, butter, nutmeg, bread):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, pepper, flour, butter, nutmeg, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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