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Melted Butter—Receipt 2

A simple butter sauce made by boiling flour and water, then adding butter until melted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Melted Butter—Receipt 2

Ingredients

Directions

Thicken the liquid

  1. Mix the flour and cold water or milk until smooth.

  2. Shake the mixture over the fire until it boils for 2 minutes.

Melt the butter and serve

  1. Add the butter, chopped into small pieces.

  2. Dissolve the butter over the fire, shaking the saucepan continuously until melted.

  3. Let it boil for 1 minute, then serve.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 cold liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce as it heats and boils.
Butter
Adds richness, fat and a smooth, glossy texture to the thickened liquid.

The step that matters

Dissolve the butter while shaking the saucepan continuously. Butter can scorch or separate if it sits still over direct heat. Constant movement spreads the heat evenly and helps the fat melt into the liquid as a smooth, uniform sauce.

“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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