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Shrimp Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, salt, boiling water, cream or condensed milk, and pickled shrimps, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Shrimp Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream together the butter, flour, and salt.

  2. Add boiling water and stir constantly in a double boiler until it boils.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the cream or condensed milk.

Finish and garnish

  1. Add the pickled shrimps; chop if preferred but better whole.

  2. Garnish with additional shrimps and parsley.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Sweet butter
Provides fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded flavour.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the boiling water, giving it body.
Cream or condensed milk
Adds richness and milk solids, softening the flavour and smoothing the texture.
Pickled shrimps
Supplies the main flavour, with a tangy brininess that stands out against the rich base.

The step that matters

Stirring the boiling water into the flour and butter. Stir constantly while the mixture heats. Flour starch swells as it heats in liquid, and without constant stirring it can clump or scorch on the base of the double boiler, leaving lumps in the sauce.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, 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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