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To Pot Shrimps

Shrimp cooked in butter with salt, mace, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Pot Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced butter

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over gentle heat and skim off any sediment.

  2. Add a small quantity of salt, mace, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper to the butter.

  3. Simmer the mixture for 3 to 4 minutes.

Coat and serve

  1. Add the shrimps and toss them in the butter until well coated.

  2. Heat the shrimps through by the side of the fire without boiling.

  3. Transfer the shrimps to shallow dishes and press them down into the butter.

  4. If not well covered, pour a little more butter over them.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Shrimps
Provide the main protein; gentle heat cooks them through while keeping them tender.
Butter
Carries the spices and coats the shrimps, adding richness and moisture.

The step that matters

Heat the shrimps through without boiling. Boiling toughens shrimp protein and makes it rubbery, so gentle heat is needed to cook them evenly while keeping them tender.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, butter, nutmeg, pepper. 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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