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Shrimp Butter

A butter sauce made with shrimp, butter, cayenne, and a hard‑boiled egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Shrimp and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,931 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Shrimp Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound the shrimps well.

  2. Add the butter a little at a time while continuing to pound.

  3. Pound all together until well combined.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

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

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Shrimp + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimps
Provide the main flavour and body of the sauce once pounded into the mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, spreadable texture.
Hard boiled egg yolk
Thickens and emulsifies the butter so the sauce holds together smoothly.

The step that matters

Adding the butter gradually while pounding. Butter added all at once can separate instead of emulsifying with the shrimp and yolk. Adding it a little at a time, while pounding, helps the fat disperse into a smooth, stable mixture.

“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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