Name: Shrimp Sauce
Ingredients: 1 cup cream or butter; 1 large cup canned shrimps

Why it works: Cream and shrimp are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,067 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Shrimp Sauce

Ingredients

1 cup cream or butter
1 large cup canned shrimps

Directions

Make a cream or butter sauce.
Add the canned shrimps and stir well.
Serve immediately.

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.

Cream + shrimptop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,067 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cream or butter: Forms the rich base of the sauce and carries its flavor and body.
Canned shrimps: Supply the main flavor and protein, stirred through the sauce to warm and coat.

“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.