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Halibut and Shrimp a LA Newburg

A dish of halibut and shrimp baked with white sauce, sherry wine, and beaten eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Shrimp and sherry work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 243 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Halibut and Shrimp a LA Newburg

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cook the halibut in salted boiling water with onion until tender (1 teaspoon salt per quart of water).

  2. Drain and shred the fish.

  3. Add the shredded fish to 1 cup of the hot white sauce.

  4. Add the beaten egg whites to the mixture.

  5. Place the mixture in the center of a hot platter and set in the oven with the door open.

Make the shrimp sauce

  1. Remove the shell from the boiled shrimp and break into small pieces.

  2. Add the sherry wine to the remaining cup of white sauce.

  3. Pour the hot sauce gradually onto the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Mix the yolks with a little cold water.

  5. Add the shrimp to the mixture.

  6. Heat thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Place the shrimp around the halibut before serving.

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 + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Shrimp + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Shrimp + saucetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Onion + sherrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetal (cream, earthy).

  5. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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

Halibut
Forms the flaky main body of the dish once cooked and shredded.
Shrimp
Adds sweet, delicate seafood flavor and texture to the sauce.
White sauce
Provides a creamy base that binds the fish and shrimp together.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce gently when heated, giving it richness and body.
Egg whites
Beaten stiff, they lighten the mixture and add a airy, tender texture.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Pour the hot sauce gradually onto the beaten egg yolks.. Adding hot sauce slowly while whisking tempers the yolks, so they warm gently and thicken smoothly instead of scrambling into lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, sauce, sherry, wine, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, sauce, sherry, wine, egg. 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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