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Shrimps with Anchovy Sauce

A shrimp dish simmered in a buttery anchovy sauce with cream and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Shrimps with Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter and anchovy paste together in a pan.

  2. Add the shrimps and season with cayenne pepper, sautéing until heated through.

  3. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and mix in the cream.

  4. Pour the mixture into a chafing dish and stir over hot water for 2-3 minutes until the sauce thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately over toast.

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

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

  2. Shrimp + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

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

  4. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream into a smooth sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety body.
Butter
Carries the flavour and gives the shrimps a rich, silky coating.
Anchovy paste
Adds a deep, salty savoury note that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce over hot water. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but too much heat makes them scramble into curds. Keep the water hot, not boiling, and stir constantly until the sauce coats a spoon.

“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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