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Salad

Dressing for Cooked Beets

A simple butter and flour dressing with vinegar, salt, and pepper for cooked beets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Dressing for Cooked Beets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Heat the vinegar in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, blend the flour and butter until smooth.

  3. Add the flour and butter mixture to the hot vinegar, stirring well.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the cooked beets 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar, adding sweetness to the dressing.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the dressing.
Flour
Thickens the dressing as its starch swells in the hot vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the dressing its tang.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the hot vinegar. Flour clumps when it hits hot liquid unless it is stirred in well. Even dispersal lets the starch thicken the dressing smoothly as it heats.

“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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