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Sauce

Norfolk Sauce, or Rich Melted Butter Without Flour

A sauce made by boiling water, adding butter, and shaking until thick and smooth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Norfolk Sauce, or Rich Melted Butter Without Flour

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put three tablespoons of water into a small saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. When it boils, add four ounces of fresh butter.

  3. As soon as the butter is dissolved, remove the saucepan from the heat.

  4. Shake the saucepan until the sauce looks thick and smooth.

  5. Do not allow the sauce to boil after the butter is added.

By Eliza Acton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides richness and fat, and when shaken off the heat it emulsifies into a thick, smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Do not let the sauce boil after the butter is added. Boiling a butter sauce can break the emulsion, separating the butterfat from the water and leaving a greasy, grainy sauce instead of a smooth one.

“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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