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Sauce

Melted Butter

A sauce made by melting butter with flour, milk, water, and optional mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Melted Butter

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cut the butter into small pieces and place it in a pint saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and milk, and mix thoroughly.

  3. Add the water and shake continuously over medium heat until it simmers.

  4. Let it boil briefly until it reaches the thickness of cream.

  5. If too thick, add a little more milk.

Variation

  1. For a variation, substitute mushroom ketchup for the milk to create a sauce for fish, meat, or poultry.

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

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Milk + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 to give the sauce its rich, smooth body and fat-based flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, and can be added to loosen a sauce that is too thick.

The step that matters

Shaking over medium heat until it simmers. Constant motion keeps the flour from settling and scorching on the pan base, so it thickens evenly. Once the starch in the flour is hydrated and heated, the sauce thickens; heating too fast can cause lumps or scorching.

“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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