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Sauce

Garlic Butter Sauce

A buttery sauce flavored with garlic, shallot, cream, salt, and pepper.

From the Wikibooks Cookbook · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Garlic Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 2 tbsp butter in a large straight-sided sauté pan over medium-high heat.

  2. Add garlic and shallot, and cook until garlic is golden.

  3. Add remaining ingredients and cook just until butter is melted.

Cool and blend

  1. Remove from heat and allow to come down to room temperature.

  2. Purée sauce in batches until smooth.

Reheat

  1. Return to pan and heat through on low heat.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

170Calories
1 gProtein
17 gFat
5 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Shallot1 tbsp minced (10g)7
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Garlic1 clove (3g)4
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

Recipe from the Wikibooks Cookbook.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

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. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + shallottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Unsalted butter
Provides fat and richness, carrying the flavour and giving the sauce its body.
Garlic
Supplies the main aroma and savoury flavour, which deepens as it turns golden.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet aromatic note that softens as it cooks.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the garlic until golden. Garlic moves from golden to bitter within seconds once it darkens, and medium-high heat makes it easy to overshoot. Stop as soon as it turns golden to keep the sauce sweet and aromatic rather than harsh.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, garlic, pepper):

  1. Onionfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, garlic, pepper. 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.

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