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Sauce

White Melted Butter

A white sauce made by thickening milk with flour and butter, flavored with salt and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,346 recipes. Both carry sabinene, which smells woody, terpenic. The science ↓

White Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Thicken half a pint of new milk with rather less flour than is directed for the common melted butter, or with a little arrow-root.

  2. Stir in a couple of ounces of fresh butter cut small by degrees after the mixture has boiled.

  3. Continue stirring until the butter is entirely dissolved, or it may become oiled and float upon the top.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

149Calories
8 gProtein
8 gFat
12 gCarbs

Counts 2 of 3 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 2 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

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

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

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. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

What each ingredient does

New milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour or arrow-root thickens into a sauce.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the sauce body.
Fresh butter (in the method)
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rich texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter until fully dissolved. If the butter is not fully incorporated while stirring, its fat separates and floats on top as an oily layer instead of forming a smooth emulsified 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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