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Butter and Cream Thickening, for Stew or Fricassee

A mixture of butter, flour, spices, and cream used to thicken stews or fricassees.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Butter and Cream Thickening, for Stew or Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butter base

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Mix in the flour and any desired spices.

Add the cream and finish

  1. Scald the cream in a small saucepan.

  2. Gradually stir the hot cream into the creamed butter and flour mixture.

  3. Add this mixture to the gravy and bring to a boil.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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
Creamed butter with flour forms a smooth base that thickens and enriches the gravy.
Flour
Starch that swells when heated in liquid, thickening the gravy.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the thickened gravy a silky texture.

The step that matters

Gradually stirring the hot cream into the butter and flour mixture. Adding the hot cream slowly and stirring constantly keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the mixture blends smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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