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Potted Shrimps, or Prawns

A dish of cooked shrimps pounded with butter, mace and cayenne and preserved in a pot.

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

  1. Boil the shrimps until freshly cooked, then shell them quickly.

  2. Chop the shrimps a little with a very sharp knife.

  3. Pound the chopped shrimps in a mortar with a small quantity of fresh butter, mace, and cayenne until perfectly combined.

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

Shrimps
Provides the main meaty texture and bulk of the spread.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, binding the shrimp into a smooth, spreadable paste.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the butter and shrimp.

The step that matters

Pounding the shrimp with butter until perfectly combined. Pounding breaks the chopped shrimp into fine pieces, and the fat coats them evenly. Stopping too early leaves a lumpy, dry texture, while the butter must be fresh so the spread tastes clean.

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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