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Shrimp a LA Newburg

A creamy shrimp dish with butter, flour, cream, eggs, sherry, and cayenne pepper served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Shrimp a LA Newburg

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the shrimp

  1. Cook the shrimp in 2 tablespoons of butter for 5 minutes.

  2. Add salt, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper; stir well for a few minutes.

  3. Remove the shrimp and add 1 tablespoon of butter; blend in the flour.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir in the cream and cook until smooth.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and the shrimp; mix well.

  3. Just before serving, stir in the sherry and serve on toast.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimp
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it its savory flavor.
Butter
Carries the shrimp's flavor and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Forms the base of the sauce and adds richness and body.
Eggs
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs. Eggs thicken when heated gently, but if the sauce is too hot they can scramble and turn grainy. Stir them in off the heat or over low heat, mixing constantly, so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, butter, pepper, flour, cream, egg, sherry. 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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