Prawns and Shrimp

Appears in

#98Mediterranean Seafood
Mediterranean Seafood

By Alan Davidson

Published 1981

  • About

Here we are dealing with the families Crangonidae, Palaemonidae and Penaeidae, and I must at once draw attention to a pitfall for visitors from North America and those who would converse or deal with them about the members of these families. North Americans call shrimp (or jumbo shrimp) what Europeans call prawns.

I have listed below those prawns which are most commonly brought to market in the Mediterranean. These are by no means all. But too much detail would be confusing; and even the species listed are not often differentiated in popular nomenclature – although the Italians, as usual, and the French can muster separate names for each.