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Shrimps on Toast

A creamy shrimp sauce served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Shrimps on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and drain the can of Bavarian shrimps.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth, but do not brown.

  3. Pour in the milk and bring to a boil.

  4. Season with white pepper and add minced parsley.

  5. Stir in the shrimps and heat through on low heat.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the toasted bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked briefly with the melted butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the creamy sauce.
Bavarian shrimps
Supply the main seafood filling and flavour in the sauce.
Toasted bread
Provides a crisp base that holds the sauce without soaking through quickly.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the melted butter. Stir constantly until the flour and butter form a smooth paste without lumps. Keep it pale, because browning changes the flavour and weakens thickening. Adding milk to unstirred flour leaves lumps, so the sauce ends up uneven.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, butter, flour, milk, parsley, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, butter, flour, milk, parsley, bread. 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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