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Sauce

Gobble Sauce

A creamy sauce with anchovy essence, lime juice, and prawns or shrimps.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Gobble Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until well combined.

  3. Add the cream and mix until smooth.

  4. Stir in the anchovy essence, salt, cayenne, mace, and lime juice.

  5. Add the prawns or shrimps and heat gently until hot, but do not boil.

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 + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Anchovy + shrimptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Provides the liquid base and a rich, silky texture.
Anchovy essence
Adds a salty, savoury depth of flavour.
Prawns or shrimps
Supply the seafood and the main flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the prawns or shrimps gently without boiling. Boiling a cream sauce can cause it to split or curdle, and overcooked seafood becomes tough and rubbery. Gentle heat warms the shellfish through while keeping the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, anchovy, pepper, lime, shrimp. 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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