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Creamed Shrimps with Green Peas

A creamy shrimp dish with green peas served over toast or crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Creamed Shrimps with Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream sauce

  1. Heat the cream in a saucepan until hot.

  2. In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and flour.

  3. Stir the butter and flour mixture into the hot cream until smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the shrimp, beaten eggs, and peas to the mixture.

  2. Heat thoroughly and serve on toast or toasted crackers.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour 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

Cream
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce when heated with the butter.
Eggs
Set when heated, adding body and helping thicken the sauce.
Shrimp
Provides the main protein and savory flavor of the dish.
Peas
Add sweetness and a bright, tender bite to the creamed mixture.

The step that matters

Heat thoroughly after adding the eggs. Eggs thicken only when heated enough to set their proteins, but overheating can make them curdle and turn grainy in the sauce. Heat gently and stir steadily until the sauce thickens slightly.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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