Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓
Mary Robertson Hawkins, Connecticut
Ingredients
Directions
Cut a well-prepared tender chicken into pieces for stewing, season with salt and pepper.
Cook gently in a covered saucepan in just enough water to make a generous half pint of strong broth when finished. Do not add water after cooking begins.
When sufficiently cooked, pour off the broth without straining.
Add to the chicken a paste made of a tablespoon of butter creamed with a tablespoon of flour. Let it boil just a few minutes to cook the flour.
Add a teacupful of thick sweet cream and return to the fire a moment to heat again quickly.
Serve immediately, poured over the hot chicken.
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 12% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter and flour 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
- Thickens the broth into a smooth, light sauce when cooked briefly with butter.
- Butter
- Creamed with flour to form a paste that enriches and smooths the sauce.
- Chicken (in the method)
- Provides the main protein, cooked gently until tender in the broth.
The step that matters
Boiling the flour and butter paste. Flour must boil for a few minutes after it is added so its starch swells and the raw floury taste cooks off. Stirring it smoothly into the broth prevents lumps.
“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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