Why it works: Shrimp and butter 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 ↓
Shrimp Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Pound the shrimp and butter together until well combined.
Rub the mixture through a fine sieve to achieve a smooth texture.
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 + buttertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,931 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Shrimp
- Provides the primary savory, briny flavor and the body of the butter.
- Butter
- Carries the shrimp flavor and gives the finished mixture its rich, spreadable fat base.
The step that matters
Rubbing through a fine sieve. Pounding alone leaves fibrous shrimp bits that make the texture grainy. Pressing the mixture through a fine sieve removes these fragments, so the butter spreads smoothly.
“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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