Name: Fried Shrimps
Ingredients: 1.5 dozen shrimps; ½ ounce butter; 1 ounce minced ham; 1 cup boiling white stock; juice of 1 lemon; pepper to taste; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 teaspoons minced parsley; squares of hot toast

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fried Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shrimp

Shell and chop the shrimps coarsely.

Cook and season

In a skillet, fry the shrimps with butter and minced ham.
Add boiling white stock and lemon juice.
Season with pepper, salt, and minced parsley.

Serve

Pour the mixture over hot toast and serve immediately.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,931 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimps: Provide the main protein and texture of the dish.
Butter: Adds fat for frying and a rich, savoury flavour.
Minced ham: Adds salty, savoury depth to the frying mixture.
White stock: Adds liquid that moistens the mixture and carries flavour over the toast.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury flavours.

“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.