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Beets a LA King

A beet salad with a creamy sauce of butter, flour, cream, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 41,494 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the beets

  1. Wash and boil the beets until tender.

  2. Drop them into cold water and slip off the skins.

  3. Cut the beets into thin slices or fancy shapes.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, add the flour, and cook until bubbling.

  2. Stir in the cold water and mix until smooth.

  3. Add the vinegar, then remove from heat.

  4. Stir in the cream, sugar, salt, pepper, and paprika.

  5. Pour the sauce over the beets and serve hot.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cream + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,494 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together20,804 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Beets
Provide the main body and earthy sweetness of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter until bubbling.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the beets' sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the butter and flour until bubbling. Cooking the flour in fat before adding liquid cooks out its raw taste and lets it thicken smoothly. Skipping this or adding liquid too early can leave lumps or a pasty flavour.

“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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