Name: Shrimp Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pint of shelled shrimp; ½ pint of melted butter; 1 tablespoon of lemon juice; ¼ teaspoon of cayenne pepper; 1 teaspoon of essence of anchovy or soy sauce (optional)

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

Ingredients

1 pint of shelled shrimp
½ pint of melted butter
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
¼ teaspoon of cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon of essence of anchovy or soy sauce (optional)

Directions

Prepare

Shell and clean the shrimp, then wash them.
Put the cleaned shrimp into a bowl with the melted butter.
If desired, stew the heads and shells of the shrimp in water for 15 minutes, then strain the liquid into the melted butter.

Finish and serve

Add lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and essence of anchovy or soy sauce if using.
Serve immediately.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Shrimp + anchovytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together440 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,931 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lemon + anchovytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,080 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimp: Provides the main body and flavour of the sauce.
Melted butter: Carries the flavour and gives the sauce a rich, smooth texture.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter.

“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.