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Shrimps and Boiled Rice

A shrimp dish served over boiled rice, topped with a white sauce of butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Shrimps and Boiled Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Make a thick white sauce by melting the butter, adding flour, and gradually stirring in the milk.

  2. Flavor the sauce with mace, cayenne, and salt.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the shelled shrimps and heat until thoroughly hot.

  2. Pour the shrimp mixture onto a hot dish.

  3. Arrange a border of boiled rice around the shrimp and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Shrimp + ricetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,055 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a white sauce that coats the shrimp.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the white sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Shelled shrimps
Provide the main protein and flavor, and turn firm and opaque when heated.

The step that matters

Heating the shrimp. Shrimp cook quickly and turn rubbery if overheated. Heat them only until they are hot through, stirring them into the sauce gently.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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