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Sauce

Butter Sauce

A sweet butter sauce made with sugar, butter, flour, egg yolk, boiling water, egg white, and nutmeg or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Butter Sauce

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat together sugar, butter, flour, and egg yolk until creamy.

  2. Pour in nearly 1 pint of boiling water and let it boil for 1 minute.

Finish

  1. Stir in the beaten egg white.

  2. Season with nutmeg or lemon to taste.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the butter and yolk beat into a smooth, creamy base.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel.
Flour
Its starch thickens the sauce as the liquid heats and comes to a boil.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps thicken and emulsify the sauce.
Boiling water
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as it boils.

The step that matters

Let the sauce boil after adding the water. Flour starch only thickens fully once the liquid reaches a boil, and boiling cooks out the raw flour taste. Egg yolk is also sensitive to heat, so the sauce should be kept moving and not boiled longer than the recipe says.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, flour, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, egg. 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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