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To Stew Prawns, Shrimps, or Crat Fish

A stew of prawns, shrimp, or crayfish simmered in wine, water, vinegar, and spices, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

To Stew Prawns, Shrimps, or Crat Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Remove the meat from the shells.

  2. Bruise the shells and place them in a pot with white wine, water, vinegar, salt, pepper, and mace.

  3. Stew for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture.

Make the sauce and stew

  1. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter.

  2. Add grated nutmeg and the seafood.

  3. Heat thoroughly.

Toast and serve

  1. Toast the slice of bread.

  2. Remove the crust.

  3. Cut the bread into six pieces.

  4. Place the bread on a dish.

  5. Pour the stewed seafood over the bread.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 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. 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

Flour
Thickens the strained liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and helps bind the flour into the sauce.
Prawns, shrimps, or crayfish meat
Provides the seafood that gives the stew its main flavour and texture.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stock made from the shells.
Thin bread
Forms the base that soaks up the stewed seafood sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked with the butter and whisked into the hot liquid to avoid lumps and a raw starchy taste. Sufficient cooking lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the mace

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

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

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