Why it works: Shrimp and nutmeg work together. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 416 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓
Prawn or Shrimp Powder
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pick and clean the prawns or shrimps well.
Roast and grind
Roast or broil them in a frying pan until crisp.
Let them cool, then pound them fine with the dry chillies, salt, and nutmeg.
Strain the mixture through a coarse sieve or muslin.
Store
Bottle the powder for use.
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.
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Shrimp + nutmegtop 27% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together416 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Dry prawns or shrimps
- Provide the main body and savoury flavour of the powder once roasted and ground.
- Dry chillies
- Add heat and a pungent flavour that carries through the ground powder.
The step that matters
Roast until crisp. The prawns must be dried and crisp before pounding; if they stay soft or moist, they will clump and resist grinding, and the powder may spoil sooner.
“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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