Name: Shrimp Wiggle
Ingredients: 1 can shrimp; 1 pint cream sauce; 1 can peas; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; Butter for greasing and crumbs

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Shrimp Wiggle

Ingredients

Directions

Remove all shells from the shrimp.
Rinse the peas with cold water.
In a bowl, combine the shrimp, peas, cream sauce, salt, and pepper.
Fill ramekins with the mixture.
Roll and sift crackers, then mix with a little melted butter.
Cover the filled ramekins with the buttered cracker crumbs.

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.

Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,931 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,331 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Swap the peas

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

Beansfits better
Sesamefits better
Peanutfits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, cream, sauce, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.