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Potted Prawns

A dish of prawn meat mixed with butter and spices, molded and set in clarified butter.

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 ↓

Potted Prawns

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick the meat from the tails of the prawns.

  2. Pound the prawn meat in a mortar with half its weight of fresh butter.

  3. Season the mixture with pounded mace, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper to taste.

Pot and serve

  1. Pack the mixture into moulds and cover with clarified butter.

  2. When ready to serve, turn out of the moulds and garnish with watercress or small salad.

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 + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + watercresstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Prawns
Provide the main protein and flavour of the potted mixture.
Fresh butter
Binds the pounded prawn meat into a smooth, spreadable paste and adds richness.
Clarified butter
Covers the mixture to seal out air, helping it keep and giving a clean finish.

The step that matters

Pounding the prawn meat with butter. Pounding breaks the meat into fine fibres and blends it evenly with the butter. Insufficient pounding leaves a coarse, uneven texture instead of a smooth paste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, nutmeg, pepper, watercress):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg, pepper, watercress. 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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