Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓
Stewed Snipe
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the snipe
Heat the butter in a saucepan until smoking hot.
Add the snipe and quickly brown them.
Dust the snipe with flour and stir until the flour is brown.
Cover the birds with boiling water, season with salt and pepper, and cook gently for 15 minutes.
Serve
Place one snipe on each slice of toast and pour some of the cooking sauce over them.
Serve the remaining sauce in a sauce-dish.
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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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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
- Snipe
- Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers gently in the sauce.
- Butter
- Carries the initial browning of the birds and adds richness to the sauce.
- Flour
- Browns and thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce that coats the birds.
The step that matters
Browning the flour. Stirring the flour until it browns develops a nutty flavour and colour in the sauce. Stopping too early leaves it pale and raw-tasting, while going too far can scorch it and make the sauce bitter.
“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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