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Sauce

Drawn Butter Sauce

A sauce made by melting butter, adding flour, boiling water, and seasoning with salt and pepper.

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

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Drawn Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Rub the flour into the melted butter until smooth.

Add the water and finish

  1. Slowly add the boiling water, stirring continuously.

  2. Boil for 1 minute, then remove from heat.

  3. Stir in salt, pepper, and the remaining tablespoon of butter.

  4. For a lemony flavor, add the juice of half a lemon.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Provides rich fat flavor and carries the sauce's buttery taste.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot melted butter.
Boiling water
Forms the liquid base, which the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Slowly add the boiling water, stirring continuously. Flour mixed into fat can clump if liquid is added too fast. Gradual addition with constant stirring lets the starch disperse evenly, giving a smooth sauce rather than lumps.

“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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