Skip to main content
Main

Shrimp Sauce

A sauce made with flour, butter, boiling water, anchovy essence, parsley, and canned shrimps.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Anchovy and shrimp work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry hexanol, which smells green, fruity. The science ↓

Shrimp Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream together the flour and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Gradually add the boiling water, stirring until it comes to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the anchovy essence, chopped parsley, and canned shrimps.

  2. Stir well and serve.

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. Anchovy + shrimptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth body, and coats the flour to form the base.
Boiling water
Forms the liquid base, which the flour thickens into a sauce.
Anchovy essence
Adds a salty, savoury depth of flavour.
Canned shrimps
Provides the main seafood flavour and texture in the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiling water. Adding the hot liquid slowly while stirring lets the flour and butter blend smoothly, preventing lumps. Stirring also keeps the starch from clumping as it thickens the sauce when it comes to a boil.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Jalapenofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, anchovy, shrimp. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes