Why it works: Flour and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓
Self-raising Flour
Ingredients
Directions
Mix the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt together thoroughly.
Store the mixture in a tightly covered, dry container.
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 + creamtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,481 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- All-purpose flour
- Provides the starch and gluten that give baked goods their structure.
- Cream of tartar
- An acid that reacts with the baking soda to release carbon dioxide for rising.
- Baking soda
- Releases carbon dioxide when combined with an acid, lifting batters as they bake.
The step that matters
Mixing thoroughly. Baking soda and cream of tartar must be evenly distributed; clumps of either can leave bitter patches or uneven rising in baked goods.
“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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