Name: Shrimp Sauce
Ingredients: ½ pint of shrimps; melted butter (thickened to the consistency of cream); 1 teaspoon of essence of anchovies

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Shrimp Sauce

Ingredients

½ pint of shrimps
melted butter (thickened to the consistency of cream)
1 teaspoon of essence of anchovies

Directions

Pick half a pint of shrimps.
In a saucepan, mix the shrimps with enough melted butter to achieve a creamy thickness.
Add 1 teaspoon of essence of anchovies.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,931 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Shrimp + creamtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,067 recipes

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

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 body of the sauce.
Melted butter: Adds richness and, when thickened, gives the sauce a creamy texture.
Essence of anchovies: Adds a savoury, salty depth to the sauce.

“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.