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 Eggplant
Ingredients
Directions
Soak and stuff the eggplant as directed.
In a pot, add the soaked eggplant and cover it with soup stock.
Stew the eggplant, covered, for 1 hour or until very tender.
Remove the eggplant and keep it hot in a deep dish.
In the pot, stir a lump of butter rolled in flour into the gravy.
Bring the gravy to a boil and pour it over the eggplant.
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).
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
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