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Sauce Ecrevisses.

A creamy sauce made with shrimp, fish stock, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sauce Ecrevisses.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, cook 1½ ounces of butter and flour together until smooth.

  2. Stir in the fish stock or milk.

  3. Let it boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the anchovy sauce and salt to taste.

Add the shrimps

  1. Rinse the shrimps in cold water.

  2. Pound the shrimps with the remaining 1 ounce of butter.

  3. Stir the pounded shrimps into the sauce.

  4. Add the cream and the lemon juice, then cook well.

Strain and serve

  1. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve.

  2. Reheat the sauce and serve.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Shrimp + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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, becoming tender and sweet when pounded into the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter before the liquid is added.
Fish stock or milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, which thickens as it boils.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the shrimp and cream.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour until smooth. Flour must be cooked in fat before liquid is added, otherwise it stays raw-tasting and can form lumps. Cooking it smooth also lets the sauce thicken evenly when the stock or milk is stirred in.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, fish, cream, butter, flour, anchovy, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, fish, cream, butter, flour, anchovy, sauce. 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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