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Shrimp Sauce

A sauce made by stewing shrimp heads and shells, then combining the broth with melted butter and shrimp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Shrimp and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,931 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Shrimp Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shrimps

  1. Rinse the shrimps in a sieve with cold water.

  2. Shell and clean the shrimps.

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the heads and shells of the shrimps in ½ pint of water, covered, for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid and use it to make melted butter.

  3. Add the cleaned shrimps to the melted butter and bring to a gentle boil.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately in a warm sauce‑tureen.

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. 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 tender, meaty body of the sauce.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture that carries the shrimp flavour.

The step that matters

Bringing the shrimps to a gentle boil. Shrimp proteins toughen and turn rubbery when cooked too hard or too long. Keeping the sauce at a gentle boil, only until the shrimp turn opaque, keeps them 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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