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Shrimp Sauce for Fish

A sauce made with shrimp, butter, water, anchovy liquor, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and flour, simmered together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Shrimp Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shrimp

  1. Boil live shrimps in salted water for 3 minutes.

  2. Pick, wash, and drain the shrimps dry.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine butter, water, anchovy liquor, lemon juice, Cayenne pepper, and flour.

  2. Heat the mixture over medium heat until boiling, then skim off any foam.

  3. Add the shrimps and let them simmer for 5 minutes.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  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 + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a rich mouthfeel and smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.
Anchovy liquor
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the sauce.
Live shrimps
Provide the main flavour and protein, cooked gently in the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the shrimps and simmer gently. Shrimp turn firm and rubbery when overcooked, so they should be added to the sauce only after it has boiled and skimmed, then simmered briefly, to stay tender.

“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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