Skip to main content
Dessert

To Make Drawn Butter

A butter sauce made by mixing flour, butter, salt, and boiling water, then adding to heated milk and simmering.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

To Make Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Heat the milk in a clean saucepan over moderate heat.

  2. In a bowl, combine the flour, butter, and salt, mixing well with the back of a spoon.

Finish the sauce

  1. Gradually stir in the boiling water until smooth.

  2. Pour the mixture into the boiling milk, stirring continuously.

  3. Simmer for 5 minutes or more until done.

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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

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

Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the flour thickens.
Wheat flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat, giving the sauce body.
Sweet butter
Adds rich fat and flavour, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Boiling water
Thins the flour and butter paste so it blends in smoothly without lumps.

The step that matters

Pouring the flour paste into the boiling milk while stirring continuously. Flour starch granules clump if they meet hot liquid unevenly. Constant stirring spreads them out so each granule hydrates and swells evenly, producing a smooth, thickened sauce instead of lumps.

“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

Wheat MuffinsWheat Muffins48 recipesWhole Wheat MuffinsWhole Wheat Muffins12 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes