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Shrimp Wiggle

Shrimp in a butter‑flour‑milk sauce with peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Shrimp Wiggle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the white sauce

  1. Make a white sauce by melting the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the shrimps and green peas, and heat until hot.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. 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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Butter
Melts to form the fat base that the flour cooks into a roux.
Flour
Its starch thickens the milk into a smooth, rich sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid that the thickened white sauce is built on.
Shrimps
Provide the main seafood and savoury flavour of the dish.
Green peas
Add sweetness, bright colour and a soft contrast in texture.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Pour the milk in gradually while stirring constantly. Starch granules swell as the sauce heats, and adding liquid too fast or without stirring lets lumps form that are hard to smooth out.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Peanutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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