Why it works: Beef and wheat work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 319 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓
Borden’s Meat Biscuit
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Boil the meat to separate the nutritious portions from the bones and fibrous materials.
Evaporate the water until it reaches a thick consistency.
Mix the thickened liquid with fine wheat flour to form a dough.
Roll out the dough and cut it into biscuit shapes.
Dry or bake the biscuits in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).
Store the biscuits in hermetically sealed tin cases, protecting them from humidity.
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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Beef + wheattop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together319 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
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Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,373 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,677 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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
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