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Creamed Shrimp and Peas

A creamy shrimp and pea dish made with milk, butter, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Creamed Shrimp and Peas

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the milk and butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add salt to taste and thicken with cornstarch.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the shrimp and peas.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy body once thickened.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded flavor to the sauce.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it heats, as its starch granules swell and gelatinize.
Shrimp
Provides the main protein, which turns rubbery if cooked too long.
Peas
Add sweetness, color and a soft, tender texture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Remove from heat before adding the shrimp and peas. Shrimp cooks quickly and becomes tough and rubbery under prolonged heat. Stirring them in off the heat lets residual warmth cook them gently while keeping them tender.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Peanutfits better
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, 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.

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