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Stewed Shrimps

A quick shrimp stew made with butter, tomato ketchup, lemon juice, sugar, cayenne, and served with toasted buttered crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shrimp

  1. Rinse canned shrimps in cold water.

  2. If using fresh shrimps, remove the shells carefully.

Stew and serve

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan until it hisses.

  2. Add the shrimps and toss with a fork to coat them in butter.

  3. Add boiling water, tomato ketchup, lemon juice, sugar, and cayenne.

  4. Stew gently for three minutes and serve with toasted buttered crackers.

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. Ketchup + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

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

  4. Shrimp + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,689 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and rich flavour, and coats the shrimp.
Shrimps
Provide the main protein and the seafood flavour of the dish.
Tomato ketchup
Adds tomato sweetness and acidity to the stewing liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the stew.
Sugar
Balances the acidity and savouriness of the tomato and lemon.

The step that matters

Stew gently for three minutes. Shrimp cook quickly and turn tough and rubbery when overcooked. A gentle simmer for a short time cooks them through while keeping them tender.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shrimp, ketchup, lemon, sugar. 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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