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

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 fresh shrimp
½ cup of melted butter
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
¼ teaspoon of cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon of essence of anchovy or soy sauce

Directions

Prepare

Shell the shrimp, wash them, and place them in a bowl with melted butter.
For added flavor, you can stew the heads and shells of the shrimp in water for 15 minutes, strain the liquid, and use it to melt the butter.

Make the sauce and serve

Add lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and essence of anchovy or soy sauce to the melted butter. Mix well and 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

Fresh shrimp: Forms the main body of the dish, providing the substance the sauce is served with.
Melted butter: Carries the flavors and gives the sauce its rich, smooth texture.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce and balances its richness.
Essence of anchovy or soy sauce: Adds savory depth, supplying umami that rounds out the flavor.

“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.