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Butteb Sauce

A sauce made with flour, butter, water, salt, egg yolks, cream, lemon juice, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Butteb Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix the flour with the melted butter.

  2. Dilute with boiling water and add the coarse sea salt.

  3. Stir briskly to combine, ensuring it does not boil.

Enrich and finish

  1. Add the egg yolks, cream, and lemon juice.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Finish the sauce by stirring in the fresh butter off the heat.

  4. Ensure the sauce does not boil after thickening.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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 sauce by swelling and gelling with the liquid as it heats.
Egg yolks
Set gently when warm, giving the sauce body and a rich, smooth texture.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a silky mouthfeel and gloss.
Cream
Adds fat and softness, rounding the sauce and smoothing its texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the richness of the butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce from boiling. Egg yolks scramble and curdle when overheated, so the sauce turns grainy. Once thickened, it should be kept below boiling and the butter added off the heat to keep it smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg, cream):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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