Skip to main content
Main

To Melt Butter

A method for melting butter with flour and water, optionally adding parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Melt Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butter sauce

  1. Combine the butter and flour in a quart tin saucepan until well mixed.

  2. Add the water and salt, then cover the saucepan.

  3. Place the saucepan in a larger pot of boiling water.

  4. Shake constantly until the butter is completely melted and begins to boil.

Add the parsley

  1. Wash and mince the parsley leaves.

  2. Boil the parsley in salt water for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the boiled parsley to the melting butter.

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 + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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
Melts into a rich, fatty sauce that carries the flavour of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the melting butter slightly so it clings instead of separating.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma and flavour to the butter (optional variation).

The step that matters

Shake constantly while the butter melts. Butter is an emulsion of fat, water and milk solids. Constant shaking in gentle heat helps it melt evenly and stay smooth, while sitting still can let it overheat, scorch or separate.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour):

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes