Name: To Butter Prawns or Shrimps
Ingredients: Prawns or Shrimps; good gravy; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon flour; a scrape of nutmeg; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; sippets (to serve)

Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Butter Prawns or Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

Remove the shells from the prawns or shrimps.
Warm them in a pan with good gravy, butter, flour, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.
Simmer for 1-2 minutes.

Serve

Serve with sippets or a cream sauce instead of brown.

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.

Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,931 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together24,377 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and flour 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

Prawns or shrimps: Provide the main protein, which cooks quickly in the warm sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the sauce.
Flour: Thickens the gravy so it coats the prawns.
Good gravy: Forms the savoury liquid base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the prawns. Prawns turn firm and rubbery when overcooked. A short simmer of one to two minutes is enough to heat them through while keeping them tender.

Swap the nutmeg

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

Parsleyfits better
Capersfits about as well
Turmericfits about as well
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, butter, flour, 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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To Butter Prawns or Shrimps