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Shrimp Soup

A shrimp soup made with fish stock, butter, egg yolks, cream, lemon, cayenne, nutmeg, and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil shrimp shells in 1 cup of water with lemon juice.

  2. Pound the shelled shrimp with butter until smooth.

  3. Soak the penny roll in some cold fish stock, then pound it with the shrimp.

  4. Combine the shrimp paste with the remaining fish stock in a saucepan.

  5. Strain the boiled shells and add the liquid to the soup.

Season and finish

  1. Season with nutmeg, cayenne, and salt.

  2. Just before serving, remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks and cream. Do not let it boil.

  3. Serve with small round croutons made from fried bread.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimps
Provide the main flavour and the body of the soup once pounded smooth.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the pounded shrimp.
Penny roll
Soaked and pounded in, it thickens the soup and helps bind the shrimp paste.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup gently and add richness when stirred in off the heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks thicken by setting when heated. If the soup boils after they go in, they can curdle and turn grainy, so they must be stirred in just before serving, off the heat.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

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