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Sauce

Shrimp Sauce

A buttery shrimp sauce flavored with cayenne, lemon, anchovy essence, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the shrimp and let them stew gently in the sauce without boiling.

  3. Stir in the cayenne pepper, lemon juice, anchovy essence, and salt to taste.

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. Shrimp + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  3. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

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

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lemon + anchovytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 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

Butter
Provides fat and richness, and carries the flavors of the other ingredients.
Shrimp
Provides the main flavor and tender, delicate texture of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the savory flavors.
Anchovy essence
Adds a concentrated savory depth that rounds out the sauce.
Cayenne pepper
Adds gentle heat that sharpens the overall flavor.

The step that matters

Stew the shrimp gently without boiling. Butter sauces can separate or turn greasy when overheated, and shrimp proteins toughen and become rubbery when cooked too hard or too fast. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and the shrimp tender.

“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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