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Prawns, Shrimps, or Cray-fish

A seafood stew of prawns, shrimp, or crayfish simmered with wine, mace, nutmeg, butter, and served over 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 ↓

Prawns, Shrimps, or Cray-fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shellfish

  1. Pick out the tails from the prawns, shrimp, or crayfish.

  2. Put the bodies into a stew-pan with white wine and mace.

  3. Stew for 15 minutes. Stir the mixture, then strain it.

Make the sauce

  1. Wash out the pan.

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

  3. Grate nutmeg into the pan. Add salt.

  4. Add the butter rolled in flour and shake everything together.

Serve

  1. Toast the bread until brown on both sides, then cut it into six pieces.

  2. Lay the toasted bread in the bottom of a dish.

  3. Pour the fish and sauce over the bread. 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. 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, shrimp, or crayfish
Provide the main protein and flavour of the dish, with tails returned to the sauce.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it thickens the strained liquid into a smooth, rich sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stewing liquor that flavours the shellfish sauce.
Bread
Toasted and laid underneath, it soaks up the sauce and gives the dish a base.

The step that matters

Adding the butter rolled in flour. Flour-coated butter must be shaken into hot liquid so the starch disperses evenly; added in one lump it can clump and leave the sauce lumpy.

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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