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Hot and Sour Shrimp

A shrimp dish cooked with onions, ginger, garlic, spices, tamarind, vinegar, and water, simmered until done.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Shrimp and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,546 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine, which smells roasted, nutty. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the masala

  1. Slice the onions with a sharp knife and fry them in a pan with cooking oil until done.

  2. Add the ground masala and fry until the oil begins to separate.

Cook the shrimp

  1. Add the shrimps, salt, and some water, and simmer for a while.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add more vinegar if required and boil until done.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Shrimp + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,546 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  2. Cumin + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,698 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,775 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Cumin + tamarindtop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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, cooking through in the sauce.
Onions
Sweeten and build body as they fry down in the oil.
Tamarind
Adds sourness that gives the dish its characteristic tang.
Red chillies
Provide heat and colour to the masala paste.
Vinegar
Adds extra acidity to sharpen the sour flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the ground masala until the oil separates. Frying the paste until the oil splits from it cooks off the raw spice and onion flavours and deepens the taste. Stopping early leaves the masala raw-tasting, while the shrimp added to an undercooked base will not carry the flavour well.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, ginger, garlic, cumin, turmeric, tamarind, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  3. Carrotabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, ginger, garlic, cumin, turmeric, tamarind, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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