Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓
Blueberry Pies
Ingredients
Directions
Sift the flour into a bowl.
Wash the salt from the butter and measure 1 cup.
Roll the dough thin and cool it on ice if too warm.
Mix the salt into the flour, rub in ¼ cup of butter, and add ice water to form a stiff dough.
Roll the dough into a rectangle and shave half the butter over it.
Fold the dough, pound it lightly, and repeat with the remaining butter.
Roll and fold the dough four times, then chill it on ice.
Pick the blueberries, removing any leaves.
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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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter 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
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