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Shrimps Powdered

A seasoning made by drying and powdering shrimps with saffron, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Saffron and pepper work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 781 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Shrimps Powdered

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the dried shrimps that have been flaked before drying.

  2. Fry the shrimps without any fat until slightly cooked.

Make the powder

  1. Powder the shrimps with saffron, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Bottle the powdered shrimps and serve with bread and butter.

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. Saffron + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Shrimp + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried shrimps
Provide the main savoury flavour and form the powder once dried and fried.
Saffron
Adds aroma and a golden colour to the powder.
Bread
Serves as a neutral base to carry the powder when served.
Butter
Adds richness and fat when spread on the bread.

The step that matters

Fry the shrimps without any fat until slightly cooked. Dry-frying without fat concentrates flavour and dries the shrimp so it can be powdered easily. Overcooking causes browning and a bitter, burnt taste, so stop once they are only slightly cooked.

Swap the saffron

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, pepper, bread, 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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