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Essence of Shrimps

A concentrated shrimp broth made by boiling shrimp with salt, spices, and anchovies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Essence of Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the shrimp

  1. Boil 3 quarts of water with 1½ pounds of coarse sea salt until dissolved.

  2. Add 1 gallon of live shrimp and boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the shrimp through a sieve and remove the heads while warm, discarding any unsound ones.

Make the brine

  1. Boil 1 pound of coarse sea salt in 2 quarts of water for 10 minutes, skimming well, then let it cool.

Pound and finish

  1. Pound the shrimp with their skins in a mortar, adding a little of the cooled saltwater.

  2. Once well mixed, add the remaining cooled saltwater along with the ground bed sanders, cayenne pepper, bruised mace, shredded bay leaf, and shredded anchovies.

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. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Shrimp + peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,692 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

  3. Shrimp + macetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together442 recipes

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Live shrimps
Provides the main shellfish flavour and body of the essence.
Shredded anchovies
Adds savoury depth that rounds out the shellfish flavour.
Cayenne pepper
Adds sharp heat to the finished liquid.
Bruised mace
Contributes warm aroma to the essence.

The step that matters

Adding the cooled saltwater. The saltwater must be fully cooled before it goes into the pounded shrimp. Hot liquid would partly cook the shrimp and dull its delicate flavour, so the liquid stays clearer and fresher tasting.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, pepper. 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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