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Sauce

Butter Sauce

A sauce made with cold and boiling water, salt, egg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Butter Sauce

Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Heat the water

  1. Combine 4 tablespoons of cold water with ½ pint of fast boiling water in a saucepan.

  2. Add a pinch of salt and bring to a boil.

Finish the sauce

  1. Break in 1 egg and add the best butter.

  2. Stir until the butter is melted and the sauce is ready.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg
Helps bind and thicken the sauce as it heats and its proteins set.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel from its fat.

The step that matters

Break in 1 egg and add the best butter. The egg can scramble if the liquid is too hot or it is not stirred in. Egg proteins set at high heat, so stirring keeps the egg blended into the sauce and the butter melting evenly.

“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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