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Stewed Shrimps

A quick buttered shrimp dish simmered with water, lemon, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter over medium heat until it melts.

  2. If using canned shrimps, rinse them in cold water before adding.

  3. Add the shrimps to the saucepan and heat through.

  4. Pour in the boiling water and cook for 1 minute.

  5. Stir in the lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Shrimp + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to form the cooking fat that carries the flavour of the shrimp.
Shrimps
Provide the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it heats.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, buttery flavour.

The step that matters

Pour in the boiling water and cook for 1 minute. Shrimp cook quickly and turn tough and rubbery if overcooked. Keeping this brief step short preserves a tender texture, especially when the shrimp were already heated through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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