Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Frizzled Beef for Breakfast
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sauce
Brown the butter in a saucepan.
Mix the flour with a little cold milk. Add the cream or milk and the flour mixture to the saucepan.
Finish and serve
Add the smoked beef and let it come to a boil.
Serve immediately.
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 + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together10,847 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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
- Butter
- Browning the butter adds a nutty aroma and flavor to the sauce.
- Cream or milk
- Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the flour thickens.
- Flour
- Thickens the cream or milk into a smooth sauce.
- Smoked beef
- Provides the salty, smoky meat flavor that the sauce carries.
The step that matters
Adding the flour mixture. Flour mixed directly into hot liquid clumps. Mixing it first with a little cold milk creates a smooth slurry that thickens the sauce evenly when added to the saucepan.
“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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