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Shrimp-toast a LA Reine

A shrimp toast à la reine made with veal gravy, lemon rind, butter, flour, spices, rich cream, and shrimps.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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-toast a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the veal gravy with the lemon rind for 10 minutes.

  2. Mix the butter, flour, mace, cayenne, and nutmeg in a separate bowl.

  3. Pour the gravy into the mixture before it begins to brown.

  4. Heat the rich cream until boiling in another pot.

  5. Combine the cream with the other ingredients.

  6. Add the shrimps.

  7. Stir in a squeeze of lemon juice.

Prepare and serve the toast

  1. Soak the crust in cold cream before frying.

  2. Toast and butter the crust.

  3. Moisten the crust with boiling cream.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimps
Form the main filling, giving the dish its savoury bulk and flavour.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and gravy mixture into a smooth sauce.
Rich cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce and enriching the filling.
Veal gravy
Provides the savoury meat base that the sauce is built on.

The step that matters

Pour the gravy into the mixture before it begins to brown. Adding the gravy while the butter and flour mixture is still pale keeps the roux from browning too far, which would change the colour and flavour of the sauce and weaken its thickening power.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, lemon, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, cream):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, cream. 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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