Skip to main content
Main

Fifty Lunches

A poached dumpling filled with shrimp, served with a cream sauce made from cucumber fillet broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Fifty Lunches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and poach

  1. Fill buttered dariolcs and tap them on a folded cloth to even the filling.

  2. Poach gently for about 35 minutes in a covered stewpan with an inch of hot water.

Make the sauce

  1. In the meantime, turn the broth from the cooked fillets into a sauce by thickening it with butter and flour.

  2. Bring the sauce to a boil, strain it through a sieve, and add the minced shrimps and cream.

Serve

  1. Once the cream is ready, turn them out onto a hot dish in a circle and pour the sauce over them.

  2. Optionally, arrange cooked cucumber fillets in the center.

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 + cucumbertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Shrimp + cucumbertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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

Shrimps
Their protein sets when poached, giving the filling a firm, tender texture and savory flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor into the sauce, and forms the base for thickening with flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells with heat, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with butter and flour. Flour thickens only when heated long enough for its starch to swell, and stirring while it heats prevents lumps. Enough heat also cooks off the raw floury taste.

Swap the cucumber

The recipe marks cucumber as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, shrimp, cream):

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

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes