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Shrimp Wiggle

A dish of shrimp and peas simmered in a white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Shrimp and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,423 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Shrimp Wiggle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the water from the can of shrimp and cut the shrimp into small pieces.

  2. Add a little boiling water to the shrimp and boil for a few minutes.

Make and serve

  1. Make a white sauce and stir in the shrimp and peas.

  2. Let the mixture stand for a few minutes without boiling, then 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. Shrimp + saucetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Shrimp + peastop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Peas + saucetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Shrimp
Provides the main protein and the bulk of the dish.
Peas
Add sweetness and a soft texture to the sauced mixture.
White sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess that binds the shrimp and peas together.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand without boiling. Shrimp turns tough and rubbery when overcooked, so after the sauce is made the mixture should rest off the boil rather than keep simmering.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, sauce. 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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