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Baked Shrimp

Baked shrimp in shells topped with bread crumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Shrimp

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine shrimp, salt, pepper, and grated onion.

  3. In a saucepan, bring milk or cream to a boil.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix flour with butter until smooth, then add to the boiling milk or cream to thicken.

  5. Pour the thickened cream over the shrimp mixture and mix well.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill shells with the shrimp mixture, cover with bread crumbs, and dot with butter.

  2. Bake until brown.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimp
Provides the main protein and the seafood flavor of the filling.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base that, once thickened, holds the filling together and keeps it moist.
Flour
Thickens the boiling milk or cream into a smooth sauce that binds the shrimp.
Butter
Adds richness, and dotting it on top helps the crumbs brown in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns during baking.

The step that matters

Mix the flour and butter smoothly before adding to the boiling milk. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unmixed. Blending it smoothly with butter first, then stirring it into boiling milk, lets the starch disperse and thicken the sauce evenly instead of leaving lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, pepper, milk, flour, butter, bread. 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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