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To Stew Shrimps or Prawns

A stew of shelled shrimp or prawns flavored with mace, nutmeg, salt, butter, and white wine, served over toast.

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 Shrimps or Prawns

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine the shelled shrimps or prawns with mace, nutmeg, salt, and butter mixed with flour.

  2. Pour in the white wine and let it stew for 15 minutes, shaking the pan gently.

Serve

  1. Line a serving dish with toast, pour the shrimp or prawn mixture over it, and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Shrimps or prawns
Provide the main protein, which cooks through in the gently simmering liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and body, and the flour rubbed into it helps thicken the stew.
White wine
Supplies liquid and acidity that carries the flavours of the spices through the stew.

The step that matters

Stewing the shrimp gently. Shrimp turns tough and rubbery when overcooked, so the pan should be shaken gently and kept at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil. Shaking also keeps the flour-butter mixture from clumping and helps it thicken evenly.

Swap the mace

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

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

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