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Cream Shrimps

A creamy shrimp dish with butter, cream, breadcrumbs, mustard, and seasonings, served hot over toasted wafers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the mustard with a little of the cream.

Cook and serve

  1. In a chafing dish, heat the butter and cream together.

  2. Gradually add the beaten egg yolks, stirring continuously.

  3. Stir in the bread crumbs, seasoning, and shrimps.

  4. Cook for 2 minutes and serve immediately on toasted wafers.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimps
Supply the main seafood flavour and the tender bite of the dish.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they cook gently with the butter and cream.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Cream
Provides moisture and a smooth base for the sauce.
Dried bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the mixture body and a thicker texture.
Dried mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that balances the richness.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolk proteins set with heat, so adding the beaten yolks gradually while stirring continuously lets them blend into the warm cream and butter evenly. Adding them quickly or letting the mixture get too hot can scramble the yolks and curdle the sauce.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, butter, cream, bread, mustard, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, butter, cream, bread, mustard, 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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