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French Peas and Shrimps in White Sauce

A baked dish of French peas and canned shrimp in a white sauce topped with grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

French Peas and Shrimps in White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the white sauce

  1. To make the white sauce, combine flour, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

  2. Melt butter in a saucepan, then add the flour mixture.

  3. Gradually stir in scalded milk and cook until thick.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix French peas and halved shrimps with white sauce.

  2. Fill ramekins or a pudding dish with the mixture and sprinkle with grated cheese.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the cheese is melted and slightly browned.

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

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 butter and milk into a smooth white sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps form the base of the white sauce.
Scalded milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as it cooks and gives it body.
Grated cheese
Melts over the top and browns in the oven, adding flavor and color.

The step that matters

Cook the white sauce until thick. Flour must be cooked long enough in the hot butter and milk to thicken fully and lose its raw taste. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and pasty, and it may thicken further once baked.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, flour, pepper, butter, milk, cheese. 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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