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Potted Shrimps, or Prawns

A boiled shrimp dish seasoned with butter, mace, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Potted Shrimps, or Prawns

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shrimp

  1. Boil the shrimps until fully cooked.

  2. Shell the shrimps quickly.

  3. Chop the shrimps a little with a sharp knife.

Make the potted shrimp

  1. Pound the chopped shrimps in a mortar with fresh butter, mace, and cayenne until smooth.

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. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Shrimp + peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,692 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Shrimps
Provide the main protein and the bulk of the potted mixture.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps bind the pounded shrimp into a smooth paste.
Ground mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the butter and shrimp.
Cayenne pepper
Adds gentle heat that sharpens the flavour of the rich butter.

The step that matters

Pound the shrimp with butter until smooth. Pounding breaks the chopped shrimp into fine particles that blend evenly with the melted or softened butter. Uneven pounding leaves a coarse, dry texture and pockets of plain butter.

Swap the mace

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

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

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