Skip to main content
Main

Shrimp Pie, Excellent

A pie made with shrimp, mace, cloves, anchovies, butter, white wine, and thin pastry.

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

Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Shrimp Pie, Excellent

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. If the shrimps are very salty, season them with only mace and cloves.

  2. Mince the anchovies and mix with the spices, then season the shrimps.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease the bottom of a dish with butter and layer the shrimps on top.

  2. Pour the sharp white wine over the shrimps.

  3. Cover with light and thin pastry and bake until done.

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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Clove + white winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,715 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Mace + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,329 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimps
Form the filling and provide the main flavour and bulk of the pie.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that enriches the seasoning of the shrimps.
Butter
Greases the dish and adds richness to the pie.
Sharp white wine
Adds acidity that brightens the shrimp flavour and moistens the filling.
Pastry
Encloses the filling and bakes into a crisp, golden top layer.

The step that matters

Seasoning the shrimps when they are salty. Salted shrimp can turn overly salty once the anchovies are added. Tasting first and seasoning only with mace and cloves keeps the balance right, since the anchovies already contribute salt and savour.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, clove, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes