Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and 124,287 recipes mention both. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Fate Aux Cebises
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Choose the ripest cherries and crush them in a pan with some strawberries to improve the flavour.
Let the mixture remain for five or six hours, then squeeze it through a linen cloth.
Make the paste
Put three quarters of a pound of sugar to two pounds of flour, and rub in half a pound of butter.
Mix all lightly together.
Let the paste stand for two hours.
Shape and bake
Roll it out and shape it into cakes.
Bake in a moderate oven until done.
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. See the original page.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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 cakes as the proteins set with heat.
- Butter
- Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown in the oven.
The step that matters
Squeezing the fruit mixture through the linen cloth. Pressing too little leaves excess juice that makes the paste wet and hard to shape, while the fruit's flavour is concentrated in the liquid. Squeezing gently and fully gives a paste that holds its shape and bakes evenly.
“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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