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Dessert

Butter Dips

A buttery pastry made from flour, butter, milk, sugar, baking powder, and salt, baked into strips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Butter Dips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 450°F (230°C).

  2. Melt the butter in a 13x9x2 inch oblong pan in the oven.

  3. Remove the pan as soon as the butter is melted.

  4. Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

Make the dough

  1. Add the milk and stir slowly with a fork until the dough just clings together (about 30 strokes).

  2. Turn the dough onto a well-floured board and roll it to coat with flour.

  3. Knead lightly about 10 times.

  4. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick into a rectangle measuring 12x8 inches.

  5. Cut the dough in half lengthwise, then crosswise into 16 strips with a floured knife.

Bake

  1. Dip each strip on both sides in the melted butter and lay them close together in two rows in the pan.

  2. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 it is mixed with liquid and worked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the dips rise and become light.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and gives the baked dips a golden, crisp surface.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough comes together and stays moist as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the crust brown lightly.

The step that matters

Stirring in the milk. Stirring only until the dough just clings together keeps it tender. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes the baked dips tough.

“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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