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 ↓
To Pot Eels
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Clean, skin, and bone the eels.
Season both sides with pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, and Jamaica pepper.
Let them sit for six hours.
Cut the eels into small pieces and pack them tightly in a dish.
Cover with a coarse paste and bake at 400°F (200°C).
Once cooled, remove the paste and pour clarified butter over the eels.
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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Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,257 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together11,405 recipes
Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
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 mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter):
- Parsleyfits better
- Turmericfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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