Name: Shrimp Sauce with Two Eggs
Ingredients: 1 quart of shrimps; ½ cup of water; 2 heaping tablespoons of butter; 1 teaspoon of flour; 1 pinch of cayenne pepper; 1 teaspoon of lemon juice; 2 eggs

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 with Two Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

Remove the shells from the shrimps.
Boil the heads in the water for 25 minutes; strain the liquid.

Make the sauce

Allow the liquid to simmer, then add the butter and flour mixed together.
Add the cayenne pepper; when it boils, add the shrimps.
Stir in the beaten eggs and cook for 3 minutes.

Serve

Serve the sauce on 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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,931 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs: Thicken the sauce as they cook, giving it a soft, creamy body.
Butter: Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour: Thickens the butter and liquid so the sauce holds together.
Shrimps: Provide the main flavour and protein of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten eggs and cook for 3 minutes. Eggs set when heated, but if the sauce boils too hard or too long they can curdle and turn grainy. Keep the heat gentle and stir constantly to keep the sauce smooth.

“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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Shrimp Sauce with Two Eggs