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Shrimp Cutlets

Shrimp cutlets made with shrimp, flour, butter, milk, egg, and bread crumbs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Shrimp Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the shrimp binder

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and add the flour, stirring until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the milk, stirring until the mixture thickens.

  3. Fold in the picked shrimps, season with salt and pepper, and let cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into cutlets and dip in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Heat the frying fat in a pan and fry the cutlets until golden brown on both sides.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Cooked with butter and milk, it thickens the mixture so the cutlets hold their shape.
Butter
Forms the fat base with flour, adding richness and helping the mixture stay smooth.
Milk
Hydrates the flour as it cooks, creating a thick, sauce-like binder for the shrimp.
Picked shrimps
Provide the main flavour and bulk of the cutlets.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs adhere to the cutlets.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, loose binder is hard to shape and can break apart or slump in the pan. Cooling lets the starch set so the cutlets keep their form when coated and fried.

“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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