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Stewed Prawns

A sauce of flour, butter, lemon, and seasonings served with skinned prawns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 Prawns

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the flour and 3 oz of butter without heating.

  2. Add pepper, salt, and warm water, then stir for 2 minutes over low heat.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the lemon juice and 6 oz of butter until melted.

  4. If the sauce is too thick, add water to reach the desired consistency and keep warm without boiling.

Add the prawns

  1. Add the skinned prawns to the sauce and stir to coat.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth, stable sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture as it melts into the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce.
Prawns
Provide the main protein and are coated by the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce warm without boiling. Boiling can cause the butter emulsion to break and turn greasy, and it can make the sauce thicken unevenly. Gentle heat keeps it smooth and glossy.

“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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