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Shrimp Sauce

A buttery sauce with flour, water, cayenne, anchovy, cream, and shrimps.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Shrimp Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Mix in the flour until smooth, then cook over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon until smooth.

  3. Add the cold water and stir until the sauce boils.

  4. Stir in the cayenne and anchovy sauce.

  5. Add the cream and the picked shrimps, heating through without boiling.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Anchovy + shrimptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and liquid into a smooth roux.
Cold water
Forms the liquid that the roux thickens into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished sauce.
Picked shrimps
Provide the main seafood flavour and texture of the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the cream and the picked shrimps, heating through without boiling.. Once the sauce has thickened, boiling can cause cream to separate and shrimp to toughen and turn rubbery. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and the shrimp 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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