Name: Terrapin Croquettes
Ingredients: ¼ pound butter; ⅓ small onion, minced; ½ pound flour; 3 cups sweet cream; ½ pint Madeira wine; 5 egg yolks, whipped; ½ teaspoon fine chopped parsley; meat of 2 full counts or 4 scant terrapins

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Terrapin Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Melt butter in a tin-lined copper sauté pan.
Add minced onion and cook gently for 10 minutes.
Stir in flour with a wooden spoon until it pulls away from the sides.
Gradually pour in sweet cream while stirring continuously.
Remove from heat and stir in whipped egg yolks, parsley, and terrapin meat.
Grease a large china platter with melted butter and spread mixture flat.
Cool quickly in the refrigerator and serve with terrapin dressing or Madeira sauce.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, madeira wine, egg, parsley, meat):

Shallotfits better
Leekfits better
Chivefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, madeira wine, egg, parsley, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.