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Sauce

Shrimp Sauce

A sauce made with velouté, cream, shrimp, lobster spawn, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Shrimp Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound and sieve the lobster spawn.

  2. Add the lobster spawn to the Velouté Sauce along with the cream, shrimps, and lemon juice.

  3. Reheat the mixture gently.

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. Sauce + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cream + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  3. Shrimp + lobstertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together403 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Fish + shrimptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Velouté sauce
Forms the smooth, thickened base that carries the other flavours.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel to the sauce.
Shrimps
Provide the main shellfish flavour and some texture to the sauce.
Lobster spawn
Colours the sauce and adds concentrated shellfish flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Reheat the mixture gently. Cream-enriched sauces thickened with starch can separate or curdle if boiled. Gentle heat keeps the emulsion smooth and stops the lemon juice from turning the sauce grainy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, fish, cream, shrimp, lobster):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, fish, cream, shrimp, lobster. 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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