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Buttered Shrimps or Prawns

A quick shrimp or prawn dish simmered in butter, flour, and bouillon, served with fried bread or toasted sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Buttered Shrimps or Prawns

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the shrimps or prawns and bouillon.

  2. Add the butter and flour to thicken the mixture.

  3. Season with salt, cayenne, and nutmeg.

  4. Simmer gently for 3 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish garnished with fried bread or toasted sippets.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimps or prawns
Provide the main protein and flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the bouillon into a light, coating sauce.
Bouillon
Forms the liquid base that carries the seasoning and shrimp flavour.

The step that matters

Add the butter and flour to thicken the mixture. Flour needs to be cooked in the hot liquid and fat so it swells and thickens evenly without lumps or a raw starchy taste. Adding it all at once without stirring can leave clumps.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, butter, flour, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, butter, flour, 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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