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A simple soup made with butter, flour or oatmeal, stock, and toasted bread squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Soups, Sauces, Broths, &C

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter slowly in a clean stew pan.

  2. Mix in enough flour or fine oatmeal to form a stiff paste.

  3. Gradually add the liquor while stirring well.

  4. Let it simmer for 10 to 12 minutes.

  5. Serve in a soup tureen with toasted bread squares.

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.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 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
Enriches the base and carries flavor as the starting fat for the paste.
Flour or fine oatmeal
Forms a stiff paste with the butter that thickens the liquid as it is added.
Liquor (broth or stock)
Provides the main liquid, which the paste thickens and turns into a soup.
Toasted bread
Adds texture and body to the finished soup when served with it.

The step that matters

Gradually add the liquor while stirring well.. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the paste smooth, so lumps do not form and the soup thickens evenly.

“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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