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Sauce

Drawn Butter, Curry Sauce, and Egg Sauce

A sauce made by thickening flour and water, adding boiling water, melted butter, and optional curry powder or soft boiled eggs.

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

Drawn Butter, Curry Sauce, and Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix flour with cold water until smooth.

  2. Thin the mixture and pour in boiling water, stirring constantly.

  3. Boil for 2 to 3 minutes.

  4. Cut butter into bits and add to the mixture to melt.

  5. Strain before serving.

Add optional extras

  1. For fish, add chopped soft boiled eggs.

  2. For curry sauce, sprinkle in curry powder.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the water into a smooth sauce body as it boils.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel as it melts into the sauce.
Soft boiled eggs
Add chopped egg texture and richness for fish service.

The step that matters

Pour in boiling water while stirring constantly. Adding the hot water to the flour and cold water mixture while stirring keeps starch dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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