Name: Shrimp Sauce
Ingredients: ½ pint of shrimps; ½ cup of water; ½ pint of melted butter; 1 teaspoon of anchovy

Why it works: Shrimp and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry hexanol, which smells green, fruity. The science ↓

Shrimp Sauce

Ingredients

½ pint of shrimps
½ cup of water
½ pint of melted butter
1 teaspoon of anchovy

Directions

Prepare

Pick half a pint of shrimps.
Boil the shrimp skins in ½ cup of water for 15 minutes.

Make the sauce

Strain the water and add it to the melted butter along with the shrimp flesh.
Simmer for a few minutes.
Add a teaspoon of anchovy and mix well.

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.

Shrimp + anchovytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together440 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,931 recipes

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

Shrimps: Provides the main flavour and the tender pieces of shrimp flesh in the sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, fatty body to the sauce.
Anchovy: Adds a salty, savoury depth to the sauce.

“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.