Name: Udo on Toast
Ingredients: UDO shoots; coarse sea salt; butter or oil for white sauce; flour for white sauce; milk for white sauce

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 ↓

Udo on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the udo

Peel the Udo shoots and drop them into cold water.
Cut the shoots into 4-inch lengths.
Boil the shoots in salted water for 10 minutes.
Change the water and boil until soft.

Make the white sauce

Prepare a white sauce by melting butter, adding flour, and gradually whisking in milk until thickened.
Add the Udo to the white sauce and simmer until thoroughly soft.

Serve

Serve the Udo on toast.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,078 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, 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

Udo shoots: Provide the main vegetable body and tender texture of the dish.
Butter or oil for white sauce: Provides fat that coats the flour and carries flavour in the sauce.
Flour for white sauce: Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy white sauce as it cooks.
Milk for white sauce: Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens when heated with flour.

“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.