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To Stew Prawns, Shrimps, or Craw-fish

A seafood stew of prawns, shrimp, or crawfish simmered in white wine with mace, nutmeg, butter, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Stew Prawns, Shrimps, or Craw-fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shellfish

  1. Pick out the tails and set them aside.

  2. Bruise the bodies and place them in a saucepan with the white wine and mace.

  3. Stew for 15 minutes.

  4. Stir and strain the mixture.

Finish the stew

  1. Wash the saucepan.

  2. Return the strained liquid and tails to the saucepan.

  3. Grate the nutmeg into the saucepan.

  4. Add salt.

  5. Add the butter rolled in flour.

  6. Shake everything together to combine.

Prepare the toast

  1. Cut the bread into thin rounds.

  2. Toast the bread until brown on both sides.

  3. Cut the toasted bread into six pieces.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Prawns, shrimps, or crawfish tails
Provide the main protein and sweet shellfish flavour of the stew.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma while helping extract flavour from the shellfish bodies.
Butter rolled in flour
Flour thickens the strained liquid, while butter adds richness and body.
Bread
Toasted pieces give a crisp, browned contrast to the soft stew.

The step that matters

Shake everything together to combine. Flour-coated butter must be fully dispersed into the hot liquid; if it is only dropped in as lumps, the flour will clump and the stew will not thicken smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, white wine, nutmeg, butter, flour, bread):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, white wine, nutmeg, butter, flour, bread. 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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