Skip to main content
Main

Shrimp Soup

A creamy shrimp soup made with shrimp pulp, butter, flour, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shrimp

  1. Pound the shrimps in a mortar with the lemon juice and butter until smooth.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Add pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  4. Soak the bread crumbs in stock.

Make the soup

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan. Mix in the flour.

  2. Combine the shrimp pulp with the soaked bread crumbs.

  3. Add the mixture to the saucepan. Stir well.

  4. Add more stock until the mixture is a thin puree.

  5. Heat the saucepan. Stir until it thickens and boils.

  6. Skim off excess fat.

  7. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  8. Serve hot.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimps
Provide the main flavour and body of the soup when pounded into a smooth pulp.
Bread crumbs
Soak up stock and thicken the puree, giving the soup body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the soup feel smooth.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a roux that helps the soup thicken as it boils.

The step that matters

Stir until it thickens and boils. Flour needs to be stirred continuously while heating so it cooks evenly without lumps; boiling fully cooks the starch so the soup thickens properly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, butter, pepper, nutmeg, bread, flour):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, butter, pepper, nutmeg, bread, flour. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes