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Croute Aux Crevettes, or Shrimp-toast

Shrimp toast made by simmering shrimp heads, then coating toasted bread with a butter‑flour sauce and shrimp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Croute Aux Crevettes, or Shrimp-toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the shrimp stock

  1. Boil the shrimp heads in 1½ pints of water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve.

Make the shrimp sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt 2 ounces of butter over medium heat, then stir in 1 teaspoon of flour, ¼ teaspoon of mace, and cayenne pepper until the flour begins to brown.

  2. Gradually add the strained shrimp liquid and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the shelled shrimp and heat until hot.

Fry the toast and serve

  1. Fry a slice of bread in fresh butter until light brown, slightly hollowing the inside.

  2. Pour the shrimp mixture onto the fried toast.

  3. Optionally, stir in sherry, lemon juice, essence of anchovy, or beaten egg yolks before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Shrimp + buttertop 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 + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Shrimp
Provides the main flavor and the meaty filling of the dish.
Butter
Carries flavor and browns the flour, and fries the bread golden.
Flour
Thickens the butter and shrimp liquid into a smooth sauce.
Bread
Forms the crisp, absorbent base that holds the shrimp mixture.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Cook the flour until it just begins to brown, stirring constantly. Too little cooking leaves a raw floury taste, while too much darkens the sauce and makes it bitter.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, butter, flour, mace, pepper, bread, sherry):

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, butter, flour, mace, pepper, bread, sherry. 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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