Name: To Stew Prawns, Shrimps, or Craw-fish
Ingredients: 2 quarts prawns, shrimps, or craw-fish; 1 pint white wine; 1 blade of mace; 1 small nutmeg; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ pound butter; flour (for rolling); 1 loaf bread (for toast); vinegar (optional)

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 Prawns, Shrimps, or Craw-fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shellfish

Pick out the tails from the prawns, shrimps, or crawfish and set them aside.
Bruise the bodies and place them in a saucepan with white wine and mace.
Let them stew for 15 minutes, then strain the mixture.

Make the stew

Wash the saucepan, add the strained liquid and tails back in.
Grate in nutmeg, add salt, and mix in butter rolled in flour.

Toast and serve

Toast slices of bread until brown on both sides, then cut into six pieces.
Arrange the toast in a dish and pour the fish and sauce over it.
Garnish with the largest claws if using crawfish or prawns, 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.

Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,776 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Prawns, shrimps, or crawfish: Provide the main shellfish flavour and meat for the stew.
White wine: Adds acidity and aroma while the bodies stew and extract flavour.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, and with flour helps thicken the sauce.
Flour: Thickens the butter-based sauce so it clings to the shellfish.
Bread: Soaks up the sauce as a base for serving.

The step that matters

Mixing in the butter rolled in flour. Flour-coated butter added to hot liquid must be stirred in well, or it clumps and the sauce thickens unevenly. Keeping the stew at a gentle heat helps it blend smoothly and thicken evenly.

Swap the mace

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

Cinnamonfits better
Tarragonfits better
Capersfits better
Macethe original

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

Brown Bread461 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

Bread Omelette60 recipes

Oatmeal Bread51 recipes

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To Stew Prawns, Shrimps, or Craw-fish