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 ↓
Hashed Duck and Green Pease
Ingredients
Directions
Roast the ducks until cooked but not overdone.
Let the ducks cool, then cut them into pieces.
Season and flour the duck pieces.
Prepare the gravy for the hash.
Cook the green peas French style.
Warm the duck pieces in their gravy and the peas in theirs separately.
Arrange the duck pieces around a large hot dish and serve the peas in the middle.
Garnish with toasted bread or stewed mushrooms.
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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Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,887 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Flour + peastop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,837 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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 peas
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter):
- Almondfits better
- Macadamia nutfits better
- Cashew nutfits better
- Peasthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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