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Sauce

Shrimp Sauce

A buttery sauce with flour, water, cayenne, anchovy, cream, and cooked shrimp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Mix the flour smoothly with the melted butter.

  3. Cook over low heat until smooth, using the back of a wooden spoon.

  4. Add the cold water and stir until the sauce boils.

  5. Stir in the cayenne, anchovy, and cream.

Add the shrimps

  1. Add the cooked shrimps and heat through without boiling.

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

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

  2. Anchovy + shrimptop 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness and a rounded flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when mixed with the butter and liquid.
Cold water
Forms the liquid base, which thickens as the flour starch gelatinises on boiling.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.
Cooked shrimps
Provide the main flavour and tender, meaty texture of the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the shrimps through without boiling. The shrimps are already cooked, so extra heat only needs to warm them. Boiling can make cooked shrimp tough and can cause the cream in the sauce to separate.

“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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