Name: Shrimp Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pint shrimp, shelled; ½ pint butter, melted; a little cream

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

1 pint shrimp, shelled
½ pint butter, melted
a little cream

Directions

Shell the shrimp.
Stir the shelled shrimp into the melted butter.
Add a little cream to the mixture.

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

Shrimp: Provides the main protein and savory flavor that the sauce is built around.
Butter: Carries the shrimp and adds richness and a silky, fatty mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cream: Adds moisture and smoothness, loosening the butter into a lighter, more pourable 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.