Skip to main content
Starter

Canapees of Shrimps

Shrimp canapés made with fried bread, shrimp, butter, whipped cream, lemon, cayenne, watercress, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Canapees of Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pound the shrimps and butter together until smooth.

  2. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve.

  3. Season with lemon juice and cayenne, then add the whipped cream.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Pile the shrimp mixture onto the fried bread slices.

  2. Top each with a sprig of watercress, garnishing with additional picked shrimps and chopped parsley.

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 + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Picked shrimps
Provide the main flavour and the bulk of the smooth, savoury filling.
Butter
Binds the pounded shrimp into a smooth paste and adds richness.
Whipped cream
Lightens the filling and gives it a softer, airier texture.
Fried bread
Forms a crisp base that holds the filling and contrasts with its softness.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a wire sieve. Pounding alone leaves fibrous shrimp pieces. Pressing the mixture through a sieve removes them and yields the smooth texture the canapés depend on.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, shrimp, cream, pepper, watercress, 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.

You might also like

Deviled OystersDeviled Oysters25 recipes