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Shrimp Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, corn starch, boiling water, shrimp, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the corn starch and beat until smooth.

  3. Stir in the boiling water.

Cook the sauce

  1. Cook in a double boiler.

  2. Stir constantly until the sauce thickens.

  3. Stir occasionally for about 10 minutes.

  4. Add the diced shrimps.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Stir in the lemon juice.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy body.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce its body.
Diced shrimp
Provides the main flavour and protein of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the boiling water gradually while beating the butter and corn starch smooth. Adding the liquid to a smooth paste prevents lumps, because starch clumps if it meets hot liquid unevenly. Keep stirring so the starch disperses before thickening begins.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, corn, shrimp, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, corn, shrimp, pepper. 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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