Name: Buttered Shrimps
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons butter; 1 teaspoon flour; 1 tablespoon tomato sauce; paprika to taste; salt to taste; 1 teaspoon onion juice; 1 can shrimps, washed and drained; thin slices of buttered brown bread for serving

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Buttered Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Heat the butter in a saucepan.
Add the flour and stir until bubbling hot.
Mix in the tomato sauce, paprika, salt, and onion juice. Boil for one minute.

Cook and serve

Add the shrimps and stir for four minutes over a brisk fire.
Serve with thin slices of buttered brown bread.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + shrimptop 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).

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

Butter: Provides fat and rich flavour for the base of the sauce.
Flour: Thickens the butter and liquids into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Tomato sauce: Adds acidity and colour, giving the sauce its flavour base.
Shrimps: Provide the main protein and are warmed through in the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Shallotfits better
Chivefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, tomato, sauce, shrimp, bread. 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.