Skip to main content
Sauce

Drawn Butter, or Melted Butter

A sauce made by rubbing flour into butter, adding water, and simmering, optionally with eggs, nasturtium, capers, or oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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, or Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butter sauce

  1. Rub 2 teaspoons of flour into ¼ pound of butter.

  2. Add 5 tablespoons of cold water.

  3. Place the mixture in boiling water and let it melt.

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

Finish for serving

  1. If using with fish, add chopped eggs and nasturtium or capers.

  2. If using with boiled fowl, add oysters while simmering 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
Forms the body of the sauce and carries its rich, smooth flavour.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter so it coats food rather than separating.

The step that matters

Heat until it begins to simmer, then remove from heat. Butter and water separate if overheated or boiled hard, so the sauce turns greasy. Stopping at the first simmer keeps the emulsion smooth and thickened.

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.

More drawn butter recipes

Sauce 103 See all 84 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes