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Prawn or Shrimp Butter

A butter made from prawn or shrimp meat and shells, flavored with mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Shrimp and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,931 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Prawn or Shrimp Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prawns

  1. Remove the heads from the prawns or shrimps and save the meat.

  2. Pound the meat in a mortar, adding a little butter to help.

  3. Pound the shells with butter and strain through a sieve.

  4. Combine the pounded meat and shell puree.

Make the butter

  1. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Mix in the pounded prawn meat and stir until absorbed.

  3. Let it cool, then mix with an equal amount of cold fresh butter.

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

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

  2. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Shrimp + macetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together442 recipes

Butter and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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 or shrimps
Provide the main savoury flavour and the seafood character of the butter.
Butter
Carries the prawn flavour and gives the finished spread its rich, fatty texture.
Powdered mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note that complements the seafood.

The step that matters

Mix in the pounded prawn meat and stir until absorbed. Stirring the pounded meat into warm melted butter lets its flavour and fat transfer into the butter. Cooling then lets the butter set firm, so the flavour is evenly held rather than separating or leaving watery residue.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, butter. 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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