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Prawns, Buttered

Prawns, Buttered is a dish of boiled prawns served in a buttery sauce with cayenne and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Prawns, Buttered

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Bruise the shells of the prawns and place them in a saucepan with the stock, cayenne, and nutmeg. Simmer for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid.

  3. Thicken the strained liquid with flour and butter until it reaches the consistency of thick cream.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the picked prawns to the sauce. Heat thoroughly for 3 minutes.

  2. Serve on a hot dish. Garnish with toasted sippets.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Prawns
Provide the main flavour and the tender, mild-tasting protein of the dish.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the shells into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid so the sauce becomes creamy rather than watery.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid so it swells and sets the sauce smooth; if it is added lumpy or undercooked, the sauce stays grainy or tastes floury.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Sagefits about as well

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