Why it works: Vinegar and shrimp work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 862 recipes. Both carry 3-methylbutanol, which smells malty, whiskey. The science ↓
Shell-fish
Ingredients
Directions
Bring 1 quart of water to a rapid boil.
Add 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt and a dash of vinegar if desired.
For shrimps, cook for 6 minutes; for prawns, cook for 8 minutes.
Stir the water with a red-hot poker to maintain temperature while cooking.
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.
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Vinegar + shrimptop 24% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together862 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Shrimps or prawns
- Heat firms the flesh and turns the shell from translucent to opaque pink.
The step that matters
Timing the cook. Shellfish proteins tighten as they heat, so leaving them in the water past the set time makes the flesh tough and rubbery. Shrimps need 6 minutes and prawns 8 minutes, so check which one you have.
“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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