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Dunbar Shrimps

A creamy shrimp dish with eggs, Worcestershire sauce, and cayenne, served hot over chips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dunbar Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pan, melt a large lump of butter.

  2. Add salt, cayenne, Worcestershire sauce, and cream to the pan.

  3. Once hot, stir in the shredded shrimps and finely chopped hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil and serve on hot chips.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Shrimp + saucetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Shrimps
Provide the main protein and flavour that the sauce is built around.
Cream
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a smooth, rich texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a soft, rich texture to the sauce as they are finely chopped.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth that seasons the sauce.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Cream can scorch or break if it is overheated or left boiling too hard on the base of the pan. Keep the heat controlled so the sauce stays smooth and does not catch on the bottom.

“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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