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Cream Stew

A simple stew thickened with butter, flour, cream, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the cream and milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour to form a paste.

  3. Add the paste to the cream and milk mixture, stirring to thicken slightly.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat gently until warmed through, then serve.

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.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, fatty mouthfeel.
Milk
Thins the cream and adds moisture, keeping the sauce fluid.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and helps the flour blend smoothly into a paste.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated, giving the stew body.

The step that matters

Adding the paste to the cream and milk. Flour mixed with fat and added to warm liquid thickens it evenly. Stirring while adding helps prevent lumps, since flour clumps when it meets liquid unevenly.

“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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