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Sauce

Drawn Butter for Boiled Lamb

A butter sauce made with flour, water, lemon, and egg yolk, served with boiled lamb.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 for Boiled Lamb

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 boil until the flour loses its raw taste.

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

  4. Cut in the remaining 2 ounces of butter and add the lemon juice.

Garnish

  1. Slice the other half of the lemon thinly for garnish with 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 as it melts into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the boiling water into a smooth sauce body.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps emulsify and thicken the sauce as it sets gently.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter flavour.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolk off the heat. Adding the yolk to a boiling mixture can scramble it. Removing the pan from heat first lets the yolk thicken the sauce gently and smoothly.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, lamb, white pepper, egg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lamb, white pepper, 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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