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Sauce

Drawn Butter

A sauce made by combining butter, flour, and cold water, then simmering and adding optional eggs, nasturtiums, capers, or oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Rub the flour into the butter until well combined.

  2. Add the cold water and place the mixture in a pot of boiling water.

  3. Heat until it begins to simmer, then remove from heat.

Finish

  1. For fish, add chopped eggs and nasturtiums or capers.

  2. For boiled fowl, add oysters and heat through.

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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 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. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Provides fat and rich flavour as the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Cold water
Adds moisture and loosens the sauce so it stays pourable.

The step that matters

Heating until it just begins to simmer. Butter and flour emulsify into a smooth sauce when heated gently; if it boils hard, the emulsion can break and the sauce turns greasy and grainy.

Swap the capers

The recipe marks capers as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, oyster):

  1. Capersthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

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