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Stewed Shrimps

A quick shrimp stew made with butter, tomato ketchup, lemon juice, sugar, cayenne, and boiling water, served with toasted buttered crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rinse canned shrimps in cold water.

  2. If using fresh shrimps, remove the shells carefully.

Make the stew

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan over medium heat until it hisses.

  2. Add the shrimps and toss with a fork to coat them in butter.

  3. Add the boiling water, tomato ketchup, lemon juice, sugar, and cayenne.

  4. Stew gently for three minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted buttered crackers.

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. Ketchup + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Shrimp + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,689 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimps
Provide the main protein, which turns firm and opaque as it stews briefly in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when heated, coating the shrimps before the liquid goes in.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness, acidity and a tomato flavor that forms the body of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the ketchup and lemon juice, rounding out the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew gently for three minutes. Shrimp proteins tighten quickly with heat, so a gentle simmer for a short time keeps them tender. Boiling hard or stewing too long makes them tough and rubbery.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, butter, ketchup, lemon, sugar. 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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