Name: Receipt for Melting Butter
Ingredients: 2 ounces of butter; 2 tablespoons of water; a little flour

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 ↓

Receipt for Melting Butter

Ingredients

2 ounces of butter
2 tablespoons of water
a little flour

Directions

Combine 2 ounces of butter and 2 tablespoons of water in a clean saucepan.
Dredge the mixture with a little flour and shake the saucepan over a clear fire until it boils.
Pour the mixture into a tureen and 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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked 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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Provides fat, which gives the mixture its richness and smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Flour: Lightly thickens the melted butter and water, helping the mixture hold together.

“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.