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Shrimp Pie

A pastry‑covered dish of boiled shrimp seasoned with anchovy essence, lemon pickle, pepper, mace, salt, gravy, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Shrimp Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the shrimps or prawns in salted water until cooked.

  2. Pick the shrimps and season them with essence of anchovies, lemon pickle, pounded pepper, mace, and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place bits of butter in the bottom of a baking dish.

  2. Add the seasoned shrimps, rich gravy, and white wine to the dish.

  3. Cover with pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) until the pastry is golden and cooked through.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimps or prawns
Provide the main body and flavour of the filling once cooked and picked.
Rich gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth so the filling does not dry out in the oven.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and seafood flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the base of the dish brown.
Pastry
Forms a golden crust that seals the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until the pastry is golden and cooked through. Shrimp cooks quickly and turns tough if overcooked, while the pastry needs enough heat to set and brown fully. Checking the pastry colour and base helps balance both.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, lemon, pepper, butter, white wine. 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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