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Croute Aux Crevettes, or Shrimp-toast

A shrimp-based sauce served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Make the shrimp sauce

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

  2. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve.

  3. Melt 2 ounces of butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  4. Stir in 1 teaspoon of flour, ¼ teaspoon of ground mace, cayenne, and nutmeg until the flour begins to brown.

  5. Gradually add the strained liquid and bring to a boil.

  6. Add the shelled shrimp and heat until hot throughout.

Fry and serve

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

  2. Pour the shrimp mixture onto the toast 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. 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
Provides the main flavor and the substance of the dish once heated through in the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavor and enriches the sauce, and browns the toast when fried.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Ground mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the sauce.
Bread toast
Forms a crisp, golden base that holds the shrimp mixture.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Flour must be cooked until it just begins to brown so it thickens well and loses its raw, pasty taste. Stopping too early leaves the sauce floury, while cooking too long can scorch it and turn it 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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