Potted shrimps are a traditional
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
dish made with
brown shrimp flavored with
nutmeg
Nutmeg is the seed or ground spice of several species of the genus ''Myristica''. ''Myristica fragrans'' (fragrant nutmeg or true nutmeg) is a dark-leaved evergreen tree cultivated for two spices derived from its fruit: nutmeg, from its seed, an ...
. The dish consists of brown shrimp in nutmeg-flavoured butter, which has set in a small pot, the butter acting as a
preservative
A preservative is a substance or a chemical that is added to products such as food products, beverages, pharmaceutical drugs, paints, biological samples, cosmetics, wood, and many other products to prevent decomposition by microbial growth or by ...
.
Cayenne pepper
The cayenne pepper is a type of '' Capsicum annuum''. It is usually a moderately hot chili pepper used to flavor dishes. Cayenne peppers are a group of tapering, 10 to 25 cm long, generally skinny, mostly red-colored peppers, often with ...
may also be included. It is traditionally eaten with bread.
Potted shrimp was a favourite dish of
Ian Fleming who passed on his predilection for the delicacy to his fictional creation
James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
. Fleming reputedly used to eat the dish at
Scotts Restaurant on Mount Street in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
.
The Times, 20 June 2008
/ref>
See also
* Food preservation
* Hatchet Job of the Year
Hatchet Job of the Year was a British journalism award given annually from 2012 to 2014 to "the writer of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past twelve months". It was awarded by '' The Omnivore'', a review aggregator websi ...
* Potted meat
Potted meat is a form of traditional food preservation in which hot cooked meat is placed in a pot, tightly packed to exclude air, and then covered with hot fat. As the fat cools, it hardens and forms an airtight seal, preventing some spoilage by ...
References
{{English cuisine
Lancashire cuisine
Shrimp dishes
Foods featuring butter
Food preservation