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Deviled Shrimps

A baked shrimp dish with a creamy filling of eggs, cream, and seasonings, topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Deviled Shrimps

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the cream or milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Press the hard-boiled eggs through a sieve and add to the mixture along with the chopped shrimps.

  5. Season with salt, parsley, pepper, and cayenne.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill greased shells with the mixture.

  2. Top with bread crumbs and bits of butter.

  3. Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. 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

Shrimps
Provide the main seafood filling and the savory body of the dish.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and helps the crumb topping brown richly.
Flour
Thickens the cream or milk into a smooth, stable sauce.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base that becomes a creamy, thickened sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the filling when pressed into the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cream or milk, stirring constantly until thickened. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps flour from clumping, so the sauce becomes smooth. Adding it all at once often leaves lumps that are hard to remove.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, butter, flour, cream, egg, pepper, 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.

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