Name: Shrimp Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pint Drawn Butter Sauce; 1 egg yolk; 1 cup cooked shrimp, cleaned and cut into pieces

Why it works: Butter and shrimp are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,931 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Shrimp Sauce

Ingredients

1 pint Drawn Butter Sauce
1 egg yolk
1 cup cooked shrimp, cleaned and cut into pieces

Directions

Prepare 1 pint of Drawn Butter Sauce.
In a bowl, combine the Drawn Butter Sauce with the egg yolk.
Stir in the cleaned and cut shrimp pieces until well mixed.

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.

Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,931 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + shrimptop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,423 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Egg + shrimptop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,829 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk: Binds the sauce and adds richness and body to the emulsion.
Cooked shrimp: Provides the main protein and flavor of the sauce.
Drawn butter sauce: Supplies fat and moisture as the base that carries the other ingredients.

“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.