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 ↓
Baked Eels
Ingredients
Directions
Sprinkle flour and pieces of butter over the eels.
Place the eels in a pan with a little water and bake for 30 minutes.
In the baking dish, make a gravy with butter, flour, a little water, mustard, and ketchup.
Bring the gravy to a boil and pour it over the baked eels.
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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Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,066 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,435 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Mustard + ketchuptop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together331 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,003 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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
Swap the mustard
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, ketchup):
- Shallotfits better
- Arrowrootfits better
- Leekfits better
- Mustardthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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