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Prawns or Shrimps, to Roil

This dish is boiled prawns or shrimp cooked until bright red or color-changed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Prawns or Shrimps, to Roil

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.

  2. Add the prawns and boil for 7 to 8 minutes until they are very red. For shrimps, boil for about 5 minutes until they change color.

  3. Do not over-boil, as this makes them tasteless and indigestible.

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

What each ingredient does

Prawns
Protein that firms and turns opaque and red as it cooks.
Shrimps
Protein that firms and turns opaque as it cooks, so it needs less time than prawns.

The step that matters

Stop boiling at the colour change. Shellfish proteins tighten as they cook. Past the point of doneness they become rubbery and dry, so pull them as soon as they turn colour.

“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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