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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
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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 sauce

  1. Heat the cream in a saucepan until hot.

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

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

Add and serve

  1. Add the shrimps, beaten eggs, and peas, stirring until thoroughly heated.

  2. Serve the mixture 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 rich, smooth body of the sauce and carries the other ingredients.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that makes the sauce smooth and silky.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Eggs
Add richness and help thicken the mixture when gently heated.
Shrimps
Provide the main protein and savory flavor of the dish.

The step that matters

Stirring in the eggs while heating. Eggs can scramble if the mixture is too hot or heated too quickly. Keeping the heat moderate and stirring constantly lets them thicken the sauce smoothly.

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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