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Sauce

Melted Butter Made with Milk

A butter sauce made by melting butter with flour and milk, seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Made with Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the butter and flour together on a plate until smooth.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a lined saucepan and pour in the milk.

  3. Stir continuously over medium heat until it boils quickly, about 1-2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the liquid a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch gelatinises when heated, giving the sauce body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and supplies moisture and milk solids.

The step that matters

Stir continuously while it comes to the boil. Flour starch can clump and scorch on the bottom of the pan if the mixture is left unstirred. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly and lets the starch disperse and thicken smoothly as it gelatinises.

“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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