Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Shrimps

A tomato-based dish with shrimp, olives, and eggs served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tomato Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Simmer the tomatoes with the mixed spices tied in a cheesecloth bag for 1 hour.

  2. Add the shrimps and salt, and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in the olives and their liquid.

Serve

  1. Prepare buttered toast and hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Remove from heat, pour the mixture over the toast, slice the eggs, garnish, and serve hot.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Shrimp + olivetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,966 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  3. Tomato + shrimptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,689 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Shrimp + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

  5. Olive + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the base of the sauce and add acidity and moisture as they simmer down.
Shrimps
Provide the main protein, firming and turning opaque as they cook briefly in the sauce.
Stuffed olives
Add salty, briny flavor and a contrasting texture to the tomato sauce.
Eggs
Set when hard-boiled, providing structure and richness as a garnish over the toast.

The step that matters

Add the shrimps and cook for 10 minutes. Shrimp cook quickly and turn rubbery when overcooked, so the timing must be watched while they cook in the simmering sauce.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, olive, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, olive, egg. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes