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Shrimps with Anchovy Sauce

Shrimps with anchovy sauce is a creamy sauce with shrimp, butter, anchovy paste, egg yolks, cream, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Shrimps with Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter and anchovy paste together in a pan.

  2. Add shrimps and season with cayenne pepper, sautéing until heated through.

  3. In a bowl, beat egg yolks and mix in cream.

  4. Pour mixture into a chafing dish and stir over hot water for 2-3 minutes until sauce thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately 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.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Shrimp + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

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

  4. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture into a smooth sauce as they set when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the sauce a softer, silkier body.
Butter
Provides fat that carries the anchovy flavour and keeps the sauce smooth.
Anchovy paste
Adds a salty, savoury depth that seasons the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce over hot water. Egg yolks thicken at gentle heat but can scramble if the water is too hot or the mixture is left too long. Stir steadily and watch for the sauce to coat a spoon.

“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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