Name: Deviled Shrimps
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon butter; 1 tablespoon flour; ½ cup cream; pepper to taste; 2 egg yolks, slightly beaten; ½ teaspoon mustard; 2 tablespoons ketchup

Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Deviled Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Stir in the flour without browning.
Add the cream and stir constantly until smooth and cooked.
Season with pepper.
Stir in the beaten egg yolks.
Let the mixture cool, then add the mustard.
Moisten with ketchup.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cream + ketchuptop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together279 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,066 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the mustard

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

Leekfits better
Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, pepper, egg, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.