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Potted Shrimps

Shrimps cooked in butter with cayenne pepper and optional mace, then pressed into small pots and cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and shrimp 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 ↓

Potted Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Make the shrimp

  1. Heat a piece of cooking butter in an enamelled saucepan until nearly boiling.

  2. Season with a little cayenne pepper and a pinch of powdered mace or allspice if desired.

  3. Add the shrimps and stir well in the butter, letting them simmer for 1-2 minutes.

Pot and store

  1. Transfer the shrimps into small pots, pressing them down with the back of a spoon.

  2. Allow the pots to cool.

  3. If storing for a few days, melt some butter and pour 1 teaspoon over each pot to seal out air.

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 + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + macetop 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. Pepper + shrimptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,692 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

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

Cooking butter
Carries the flavour and keeps the shrimp moist, and when cooled it forms a seal against air.
Shrimps
Provide the main protein and flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Simmering the shrimps in butter. Simmering only 1-2 minutes is enough to cook shrimp through. Cooking longer toughens the protein and makes it rubbery, so timing matters more than heat.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, shrimp):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, shrimp. 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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