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Shrimp or Prawn Butter

A cold butter sauce made by blending shrimp or prawns with butter and cayenne pepper.

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 ↓

Shrimp or Prawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butter

  1. Pound the shelled shrimp or prawns in a mortar.

  2. Add an equal weight of fresh butter and some Cayenne pepper.

  3. Place the mixture in a bain-marie and melt the butter.

  4. Pass the melted mixture through a strong sieve.

Serve

  1. Serve cold as a hors d'oeuvre.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimp or prawns
Provides the main shellfish flavour and body that the butter carries.
Butter
Supplies fat that carries the flavour and sets firm when cold, giving a spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Melting the butter gently in the bain-marie. Gentle indirect heat melts the butter without scorching its milk solids. Straining the warm mixture then separates the clear fat from the shrimp solids, so the spread stays smooth rather than grainy or burnt-tasting.

“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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