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Sauce

Melted or Drawn Butter

A simple butter sauce made by mixing flour, salt, water or milk, then boiling and adding butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Melted or Drawn Butter

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Melted or Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix flour and salt.

  2. Gradually add water or milk, stirring until smooth.

  3. Transfer to a saucepan and place in boiling water.

  4. Stir as it warms, then add butter gradually, stirring until melted and combined.

Finish

  1. Boil for one minute.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, smooth mouthfeel and a rounded buttery flavor.
Water or milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens; milk adds a richer, creamier flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the butter gradually. Whisking the butter in bit by bit while the liquid is warm lets it emulsify into the thickened base. Adding it all at once can leave a greasy, separated sauce.

“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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