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Devilled Shrimps

A dish of boiled shrimp finished with a butter, mace, salt, and cayenne pepper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Shrimp and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,931 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Devilled Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the butter

  1. Pick the boiled shrimps clean, saving the heads and skins.

  2. Combine the heads and skins with butter, mace, a little coarse sea salt, and cayenne pepper in a saucepan.

  3. Simmer the mixture for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain the butter through a fine sieve.

  5. Clean the saucepan.

Warm and pot the shrimp

  1. Return the saucepan to the heat for 1 minute with the shrimps.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Remove the shrimps.

  4. Place the shrimps in pots, pressing them down as they cool.

  5. Pour the strained butter over the shrimps.

  6. Divide the butter equally among the shrimps.

  7. Add more butter when cold.

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

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

  2. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

Mace and pepper 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

Boiled shrimps
Provide the main protein and the flesh that is packed into pots.
Butter
Carries the spice flavour and seals the shrimp in pots as it cools and sets.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the butter.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat, giving the butter its deviled bite.

The step that matters

Straining the butter through a fine sieve. Straining removes solids from the simmered shell and spice mixture. Leftover particles would cloud the butter and can turn bitter or spoil faster, so the clear fat should be poured off carefully.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, butter, 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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