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Croute Aux Crevettes, or Shrimp-toast

A shrimp toast made with a crusty bread base and a butter‑flour sauce with mace, cayenne, and nutmeg.

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 liquid

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

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

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

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

Toast and serve

  1. Prepare a toast from the bottom crust of a loaf, hollow it slightly.

  2. Fry the toast in fresh butter until light brown.

  3. Pour the shrimp mixture onto the toast and serve.

  4. Optionally, add sherry, lemon juice, 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. 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
Supplies the main flavour and the body of the shrimp sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns lightly when frying the toast.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Bread toast
Forms the crisp, absorbent base that holds the sauce.
Egg yolks
Optional; thickens and enriches the sauce if added.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Cooking the flour in melted butter until it just begins to brown removes its raw taste and gives it thickening power. Stop too early and the sauce tastes pasty; too long and it turns 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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