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Croute Aux Crevettes, or Shrimp-toast

A shrimp-infused toast served with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Croute Aux Crevettes, or Shrimp-toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shrimp liquor

  1. Shell the shrimp and bruise the heads.

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

  3. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve.

Make the shrimp sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour, mace, cayenne, and nutmeg until the flour begins to brown.

  3. Gradually add the strained shrimp liquor and bring to a boil.

  4. Add the shrimp and heat until they are hot throughout.

Fry the toast and serve

  1. Fry the hollowed toast in fresh butter until light brown.

  2. Pour the shrimp mixture onto the toast.

  3. Add essence of anchovies, sherry, lemon juice, or beaten egg yolks for extra flavor.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provide the main flavor and protein of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavors of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks and browns slightly with the butter.
Bread toast
Forms the crisp base that holds the shrimp mixture.
Egg yolks
Can enrich and thicken the sauce when added as an option.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Cooking the flour in butter until it just begins to brown cooks off its raw taste and thickens the sauce. Stopping too early leaves a pasty flavor, while going too far can taste bitter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, veal, sherry):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, veal, 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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