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Shrimp Fricassee

A tomato-based shrimp dish simmered with butter, flour, onion, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Shrimp Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a chafing dish, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and chopped onion, cooking until the mixture is brown.

  3. Stir in the strained tomato and cook until thick, stirring occasionally.

Cook the shrimp

  1. Clean, wash, and drain the shrimp, then add them to the mixture.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Cover the dish, reduce heat, and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

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 + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  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

Shrimp
Provides the main protein and becomes tender as it cooks in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce together with the butter as it cooks.
Strained tomato
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds acidity and body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and carries the flavor of the onion.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until brown. Browning the flour and onion in butter builds nutty, deeper flavor and helps the later sauce thicken evenly. Stop too early and the sauce tastes raw and pasty; go too far and it turns bitter.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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