Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 122,858 recipes mention both. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
To Make Paste for the Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Pour half a pound of butter or dripping, boiling hot, into a quart of flour.
Add as much water as will make it a paste.
Work it and roll it well before you use it.
It is quite a savoury paste.
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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Butter + flourtop 6% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together122,858 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 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
- Butter
- Melted fat coats the flour, shortening the dough and giving it a rich, tender texture.
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the paste once water is added and the dough is worked.
The step that matters
Pouring in the boiling hot fat. Very hot fat coats and partly cooks the flour starch before water is added, which keeps the paste short and tender rather than tough. Using fat that is not hot enough leaves the dough harder to handle.
“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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