Skip to main content
Sauce

Shrimp Sauce

A sauce made with white sauce, shrimps, anchovy essence, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper, served warm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sauce and anchovy 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 ↓

Shrimp Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Simmer the shrimp shells in milk and water to make fish stock for the white sauce.

  2. Add the shrimps, anchovy essence, lemon juice, and cayenne to the hot white sauce.

  3. Cover the saucepan and let it stand for a few minutes without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce warm.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sauce + shrimptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

White sauce
Forms the creamy base, with starch-thickened body that holds the other flavours.
Picked shrimps
Supplies the main seafood flavour and tender, meaty pieces throughout the sauce.
Anchovy essence
Adds concentrated savoury depth that enhances the seafood taste.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy flavour.

The step that matters

Let the sauce stand without boiling. Shrimp turns rubbery when its proteins are overheated, and a milk-based sauce can curdle or separate at a rolling boil. Holding the sauce just below boiling, covered, cooks the shrimp gently and keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, shrimp, anchovy, pepper):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, shrimp, anchovy, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes