Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Hot Water Paste
Ingredients
Directions
Heat the butter and water until hot.
Pour the hot butter and water into the flour.
Stir until a stiff dough forms.
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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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the dough once hydrated and stirred into a stiff paste.
- Butter
- Adds fat that tenderises the paste and keeps it short and flaky.
- Water
- Hydrates the flour and, heated with the butter, gelatinises starch for a pliable dough.
The step that matters
Pouring the hot butter and water into the flour. The liquid must be hot so it partly gelatinises the starch in the flour. This makes the dough easy to handle and shape while it is still warm.
“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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