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To Butter Prawns or Shrimps

A quick buttered prawn or shrimp dish flavored with gravy, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 or Shrimps

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the prawns or shrimps from their shells.

Cook and serve

  1. Warm them in a pan with gravy, butter, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  2. Simmer for 1-2 minutes while stirring.

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

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

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Shrimp + peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,692 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

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, cooking quickly to a tender texture in the warm sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Good gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying savoury flavour through the dish.

The step that matters

Simmer for 1-2 minutes while stirring. Shellfish cooks very quickly and turns firm and rubbery if overheated. Brief, gentle simmering with constant stirring keeps the prawns tender and helps the butter and gravy combine into a smooth sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, butter, 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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