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Plain Melted Butter

A simple sauce made by melting butter, adding flour, water, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Plain Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Once melted, gradually add the flour, stirring continuously until well combined.

  3. Slowly pour in the water while stirring to avoid lumps.

  4. Add salt to taste and continue to stir until the mixture thickens.

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.

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).

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
Adds richness and fat, and carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the sauce its body.
Water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Slowly pour in the water while stirring. Flour added to liquid can form lumps if the liquid is poured in quickly or not stirred. Adding it slowly while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

“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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