Skip to main content
Starter

Potted Shrimps or Shrimp Butter

A garnish of boiled egg yolk butter mixed with pepper and salt, arranged on egg whites and topped with shrimp or parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potted Shrimps or Shrimp Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the yolks from the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Pound the yolks with butter, pepper, and salt until smooth.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the egg whites into thin strips.

  2. Arrange the strips in a lattice over the rounds.

  3. Place a pat of the yolk mixture in the center of the lattice.

  4. Top with a whole shrimp or a tiny sprig of parsley.

  5. Make a bed of fresh dry parsley on a dish and lay the rounds on it.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks give the filling richness and body; whites form firm strips for the lattice.
Butter
Fat that softens and enriches the yolks, making the mixture smooth and spreadable.

The step that matters

Pound the yolks with butter until smooth. Yolks and fat must be worked together fully so the mixture forms a uniform, spreadable paste. Lumps of unblended yolk or cold, unsoftened butter leave a grainy texture instead of a smooth one.

“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.

You might also like

Deviled OystersDeviled Oysters25 recipes