Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Flour Ball
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the flour ball
Tie the flour in a bag made of unbleached muslin or a new, white stocking.
Boil the bag in water for 8 hours.
Remove the bag and dry the contents in an oven until completely dry.
Crack open the dried ball.
Pulverize the inside and sift it.
Use
Add ½ to 1 teaspoon of the pulverized flour ball to each bottle just before feeding.
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.
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Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,373 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Wheat flour
- Forms the dough ball that is boiled, dried, and then ground into powder for use.
“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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