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 ↓
Pot Roast
Ingredients
Directions
Trim excess suet from the roast; use butter if there's no suet.
Heat suet or butter in a vessel until smoking hot, then add the meat.
Brown the meat on all sides, then add a little water at a time until tender.
Remove the cover and cook until the water evaporates, browning the meat lightly.
Sprinkle dry flour into the hot fat; when browned, add water to make gravy.
Add coarse sea salt about 20 minutes before the roast is done.
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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