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Potted Shrimps

A dish of boiled shrimps seasoned with pepper, salt, nutmeg, butter, and clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potted Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Boil and pick the shrimps.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little grated nutmeg.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of butter for every 1 cup of shrimps and pound well with the seasoning.

Pot and seal

  1. Heat in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Press into a jar and, when cold, cover with clarified butter.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. 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

Shrimps
Provide the main flavour and body of the potted mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps bind the pounded shrimp into a spreadable paste.
Clarified butter
Forms a top layer that excludes air, helping the potted shrimp keep.

The step that matters

Covering with clarified butter when cold. Clarified butter poured over the shrimp while it is still warm can mix in or fail to set properly. Letting the mixture cool first lets the butter form a firm, airtight seal over the top.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, pepper, 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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