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 ↓
Oyster Patties
Ingredients
Directions
Make a puff paste: Wet a smooth stone or marble slab with a little water.
Knead ⅓ cup of butter on the slab to remove salt and buttermilk, reserving 1 ounce of butter.
Dust the slab with ½ lb of flour, forming a well in the center. Add the reserved butter and the yolk of one egg, mixing to a cream.
Gradually add flour from the well and enough ice-cold water to form a dough similar to shortcake.
Knead the dough until it is clean and does not stick to your fingers. Shape it into a ball and flatten it on the floured slab.
Roll the dough for five minutes, turning and folding it to toughen it.
Roll the dough into an 8-inch square, place the cold butter in the center, and fold the dough over to cover it completely.
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).
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Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,184 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
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Flour + oystertop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,582 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, 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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