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Shrimp Stew

A stew of shrimp simmered in milk, butter, flour, wine, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew base

  1. Boil the milk in a pot.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour and butter until smooth.

  3. Add the flour-butter mixture to the boiling milk.

  4. Season with cayenne pepper and boil for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the shrimp and boil for an additional 10 minutes.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the wine and add lemon slices.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the stew, giving it a creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the stew body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the milk.
Shrimp
Provides the main protein and sweet, delicate seafood flavor.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich milk base.

The step that matters

Adding the flour-butter mixture to the boiling milk. If the mixture is not smooth or is dropped in clumps, the flour will not disperse evenly and lumps will form. Stirring well as it goes in helps the starch hydrate and thicken the liquid uniformly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Grapefits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, milk, butter, flour, pepper, wine. 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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