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Sauce

Drawn Butter

A sauce made from butter, flour, boiling water, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with 1 ounce of the butter.

  2. Stir in the boiling water and cook until the flour loses its raw taste.

  3. Remove from heat and immediately add the beaten egg yolk.

  4. Stir well, then cut in the remaining 2 ounces of butter.

  5. Add the juice of ½ lemon and mix thoroughly.

Garnish

  1. Garnish with thin slices of the other half of the lemon and parsley if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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
Provides richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce and helps it set with a creamy body when gently heated.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk off the heat. The yolk must be added off the heat and stirred in quickly, since direct heat can scramble the egg proteins and leave lumps instead of a smooth, emulsified sauce.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, lamb, lemon, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lamb, lemon, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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