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Sauce

Drawn Butter Sauce

A sauce made by melting butter, adding flour, seasoning, water, and finishing with remaining butter.

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

  1. Melt half the butter in a shallow saucepan.

  2. Add flour and cook until frothy.

  3. Add white pepper, salt, and cold water, stirring constantly until the mixture boils.

  4. Let it boil for about three minutes.

  5. Beat in the remaining butter a little at a time.

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. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + white peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

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 a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Cold water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring while the mixture comes to a boil. Flour can clump if liquid is added to it unevenly or heated without stirring. Constant stirring disperses the starch so it thickens into a smooth sauce rather than lumps.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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