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To Butter Prawns and Shrimps

A quick sauté of prawns or shrimps in butter, flour, nutmeg, salt, pepper, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 and Shrimps

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Warm the shelled prawns or shrimps in a pan.

  2. Add butter and flour, stirring to combine.

  3. Sprinkle in nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  4. Simmer for 1-2 minutes, stirring continuously.

  5. Serve with sippets or a cream sauce.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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 and turns firm and opaque when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the sauce feel smooth.
Flour
Thickens the butter and juices into a light coating sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer for 1-2 minutes, stirring continuously. Flour thickens only when heated while stirred, and constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the pan base. Stop once the sauce coats the prawns, since overcooking toughens the shellfish.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. 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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