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Shrimp Rolls

Shrimp rolls are slices of fresh brown bread topped with butter, shrimps, mustard, and cress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 293 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Shrimp Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut fresh brown bread into slices, not too new.

  2. Spread butter on each slice.

Roll and serve

  1. Sprinkle shelled shrimps on the buttered bread.

  2. Roll up each slice, ensuring they are all the same size.

  3. Arrange the rolls on a bed of mustard and cress.

  4. Optionally, spread anchovy paste on the bread before adding shrimps and sprinkle with chopped watercress, or use caviar instead.

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. Mustard + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + caviartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together107 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Shrimp + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Coats the bread, adding richness and moisture and keeping the filling from soaking in.
Shelled shrimps
Provide the main filling, adding savoury flavour and a tender bite.
Fresh brown bread
Forms the wrapper that holds the filling and gives the rolls their structure.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, shrimp, anchovy, watercress, caviar):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, shrimp, anchovy, watercress, caviar. 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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