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Sauce

Shrimp and Asparagus Sauce

A sauce made with shrimp, asparagus, butter, flour, and weak broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Shrimp and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,931 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Shrimp and Asparagus Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cut the asparagus into short pieces.

  2. Boil the asparagus in weak broth until tender.

Make the shrimp butter

  1. Boil the shrimp, then separate the flesh from the shells.

  2. Pound the shells and heat them with butter for a few minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Add flour to the shrimp-butter and mix well.

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

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

  2. Asparagus + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Asparagus
Forms the main vegetable of the dish, softened by boiling until tender.
Shrimp
Provides the main shellfish flavour, with shells adding extra flavour when heated in butter.
Butter
Carries the shrimp flavour and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells and binds the butter and liquid together.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the shrimp butter. Flour must be stirred evenly into the butter so its starch disperses. Dry starch that meets liquid unevenly clumps, and lumps are hard to remove once the sauce thickens.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

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