Name: Shrimp Butter
Ingredients: 1 pound shrimp remains; 1 pound butter

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

1 pound shrimp remains
1 pound butter

Directions

Finely pound the shrimp remains.
Add the shrimp to an equal weight of butter.
Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.
Place in a bowl and set aside in a cool place.

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.

Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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 remains: Supplies the concentrated shrimp flavor that the butter absorbs and carries.
Butter: Carries the shrimp flavor and gives the finished spread its rich, smooth texture.

“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.