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Croute Aux Crevettes, or Shrimp-toast

Shrimp toast made by simmering shrimp heads, then coating a fried bread slice with a spiced shrimp sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 stock

  1. Boil the shrimp heads in 1½ pints of water for 30 minutes, then 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.

  3. Cook the mixture, stirring often, until the flour begins to brown.

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

  5. Add the shelled shrimp and heat until hot throughout.

Fry the toast and serve

  1. Fry the hollowed bread slice in fresh butter until light brown.

  2. Pour the shrimp mixture onto the fried toast.

  3. Optionally, add essence of anchovies, 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Shrimp + buttertop 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

Shrimp
Provides the main flavour and the body of the dish once heated through.
Butter
Carries the spices and enriches the sauce while it is fried and browned on the toast.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks and browns in the melted butter.
Bread
Forms the base that soaks up the sauce and fries to a light brown crust.

The step that matters

Cook the flour until it just begins to brown. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred often; too little cooking leaves a raw starchy taste, while overcooking scorches it and gives a bitter flavour. Stirring also keeps lumps from forming before the liquid is added.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, bread, sherry):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, bread, 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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