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To Pot Shrimps

Shrimp paste made by pounding boiled shrimp with mace, pepper, and salt, served in small pots with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

To Pot Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shrimp

  1. Season the shrimp with mace, pepper, and salt to taste.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the shrimp until they boil.

  3. Drain the shrimp and pound them in a mortar until they form a paste.

Pot and seal

  1. Transfer the shrimp paste into small pots and let them cool.

  2. Pour clarified butter over the shrimp paste in the pots.

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 + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. White pepper + buttertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Shrimp + white peppertop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine shrimp
Forms the main body of the paste once pounded.
Butter
Adds richness and helps cook the shrimp gently in the saucepan.
Clarified butter
Poured over the top, it seals the paste and adds a protective fat layer.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the shrimp.

The step that matters

Stir the shrimp in the melted butter until they boil. Shrimp turn firm and opaque when cooked, and overcooking toughens them, which makes the pounded paste grainy rather than smooth. Stop heating as soon as they reach a boil.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, mace, butter. 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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