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Sauce

Shrimp Sauce

A sauce made with anchovy essence, cayenne pepper, melted butter, shrimp, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Shrimp Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the essence of anchovies and cayenne pepper with the melted butter.

  2. Add the picked shrimps to the boiling butter.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Let it sit until the shrimps are heated through, without boiling again.

Finish and serve

  1. Add a small piece of lemon 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

  4. Shrimp + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Melted butter
Carries the flavours and gives the sauce its rich, smooth body.
Picked shrimps
Provide the main protein and sweet, savoury flavour of the sauce.
Essence of anchovies
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the butter.
Lemon
Adds a bright acidity that balances the rich butter.

The step that matters

Heating the shrimps without boiling. Once the shrimps are added, boiling the butter again can toughen their proteins and make them rubbery. Gentle residual heat cooks them through while keeping them tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, shrimp. 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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