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Potted Shrimps

Shrimps simmered in butter with cayenne and mace, then cooled and covered with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Potted Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the shrimp

  1. Combine the picked shrimps, butter, cayenne, pounded mace, and salt in a stewpan.

  2. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Pot and seal

  1. Transfer the mixture into pots and let it cool.

  2. Cover the cooled shrimps with melted 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. Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

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

  2. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Shrimp + macetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together442 recipes

Butter and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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
Form the main body of the dish and carry its delicate sweet flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and sets firm when cooled to seal the top.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Cayenne
Adds a gentle background heat.

The step that matters

Sealing with melted butter. The melted butter should fully cover the cooled shrimp. As it sets, it excludes air, which slows oxidation and drying and helps the potted shrimp keep.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, 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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