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To Pot Prawns and Shrimps

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

To Pot Prawns and Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the prawns and shrimps until cooked, then remove them from their shells.

  2. Season the seafood with salt, white pepper, a little mace, and cloves.

  3. Press the seasoned seafood into a pot.

  4. Set the pot in the oven for 10 minutes.

  5. Once cooled, cover the seafood with a layer of clarified 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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  4. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. White pepper + clovetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together752 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Mace and butter 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

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, mace, clove, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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