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Shrimps a LA Newburg

A creamy shrimp dish with hard‑boiled egg yolks, cream, butter, flour, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Shrimps a LA Newburg

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard‑boiled eggs and blend with the cream until smooth.

  2. Cream the butter and work in the flour until combined.

  3. Stir in the yolk and cream mixture over hot water until thick and smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the washed and dried shrimps, cover, and let stand for 5 minutes.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in the sherry 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Shrimp + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set gently in the warm cream.
Cream
Provides the liquid base and smooth, rich body for the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and helps form the base for the flour mixture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid when cooked with the butter.
Shrimps
Provide the main protein and mild seafood flavour in the dish.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the yolk and cream mixture over hot water. Egg yolks thicken at gentle heat and can scramble if overheated. Stirring over hot water rather than direct heat keeps the sauce smooth and thick.

“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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