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Sauce

Drawn Butter

A sauce made by melting butter with flour, milk, and water, then simmering until thick and creamy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Work the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the sweet milk.

Make the drawn butter

  1. Put the mixture in a small saucepan over low heat.

  2. When melted, add 1 tablespoon of sweet milk mixed with 6 tablespoons of water.

  3. Keep the saucepan moving to ensure the contents move in the same direction.

  4. When it simmers and looks thick and creamy, let it gently boil.

  5. Pour it into a tureen as soon as it boils.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Sweet butter
Forms the rich fat base that gives the sauce its flavor and silky body.
Flour
Thickens the butter as it heats, giving the sauce a creamy, smooth consistency.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and milk solids that help the sauce turn thick and creamy.

The step that matters

Keep the saucepan moving. Constant movement keeps the flour and milk solids evenly dispersed and prevents them from scorching or clumping on the hot pan bottom, which would make the sauce grainy or burnt.

“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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