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Creamed Shrimps

A creamy shrimp dish with rice, onion, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the flour until well blended.

  3. Gradually add enough milk to make a smooth and slightly thick mixture.

Finish and heat

  1. Add the finely chopped onion, rice, and shrimps.

  2. Season to taste and heat everything well.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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, slightly thick sauce.
Butter
Fat that is melted and combined with flour to start the sauce.
Milk
Liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the creamy sauce base.
Shrimps
Main protein that is heated through in the creamy sauce.
Boiled rice
Starchy base that is folded into the sauce and served with it.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually. Adding milk slowly to the flour and melted butter lets the starch hydrate evenly, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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