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Sauce

Drawn-butter Sauce

A sauce made by melting butter, whisking in flour, adding water or stock, and finishing with remaining butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Drawn-butter Sauce

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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux and liquid

  1. In a saucepan, melt 2 ounces of butter over medium heat until it bubbles.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour and stir with a whisk until the flour is cooked but not browned.

  3. Gradually mix in the water or stock until well combined.

Finish and season

  1. Remove from heat and strain through a sieve.

  2. Stir in the remaining 1 ounce of butter until melted and mixed.

  3. For a slightly acidic flavor, add a few drops of vinegar or lemon juice before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Adds richness and a rounded buttery flavor, and carries fat through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated with the butter.
Water or white stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the thickened butter is spread through.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the water or stock. Adding the liquid slowly while whisking lets the flour starch disperse evenly before it thickens. Adding it all at once tends to form lumps that are hard to smooth out.

“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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