Name: Shrimps
Ingredients: ½ pint picked shrimps; 2 tablespoons mayonnaise sauce; a few grains cayenne pepper; ¼ pint aspic jelly; a good bunch watercress; a little lobster coral; minced parsley; thin rounds of bread and butter, about 3 inches long and 1¼ inches wide

Why it works: Watercress and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 469 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Shrimps

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

½ pint picked shrimps
2 tablespoons mayonnaise sauce
a few grains cayenne pepper
¼ pint aspic jelly
a good bunch watercress
a little lobster coral
minced parsley
thin rounds of bread and butter, about 3 inches long and 1¼ inches wide

Directions

Prepare the shrimp

Combine shrimps, mayonnaise, 1 tablespoon of liquid aspic, and cayenne pepper in a bowl; mix well.
Spoon the shrimp mixture onto the center of each round of bread and butter.

Garnish and arrange

Sprinkle alternately with lobster coral and chopped parsley.
Chop the aspic and arrange it around the edge of a serving dish.
Place the pieces of bread leaning against each other and fill the center with watercress or any other green.

Serve

Serve immediately.

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.

Watercress + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together469 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Sauce + lobstertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Shrimp + lobstertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together403 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

Shrimps: Provide the main filling and the savoury flavour of the dish.
Mayonnaise sauce: Binds the shrimp and adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Aspic jelly: Sets into a jelly that adds moisture and a glossy finish around the dish.
Bread and butter: Forms the crisp, buttery base that holds the shrimp filling.

Swap the parsley

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

Capersfits better
Parsleythe original
Tarragonfits about as well
Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, sauce, pepper, watercress, lobster, bread, 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.