Name: Shrimp Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pint of shelled shrimps; ½ pint of good melted butter; Juice of ½ lemon; Cayenne pepper to taste; Essence of anchovy or soy sauce (optional)

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Shrimp Sauce

Ingredients

1 pint of shelled shrimps
½ pint of good melted butter
Juice of ½ lemon
Cayenne pepper to taste
Essence of anchovy or soy sauce (optional)

Directions

Prepare

Shell and clean the shrimps, then wash them.
Optionally, stew the heads and shells of the shrimps with a bruised mace blade for 15 minutes.
Strain the liquid and use it to melt the butter.

Make the sauce

Put the cleaned shrimps into ½ cup of melted butter.
Add lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and essence of anchovy or soy sauce if desired.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Shrimp + anchovytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together440 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,931 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lemon + anchovytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,080 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimps: Provide the main flavor and the body of the sauce.
Butter: Carries the shrimp flavor and gives the sauce its richness and smooth texture.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the shrimp.

“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.