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Sauce

Buttee Sauce

A sauce made from hard‑boiled eggs, fish water, butter, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Buttee Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the eggs until the yolks are hard, then mash them smooth.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the fish water and a little flour mixed with cold water to thicken.

  2. Stir in the butter and the mashed eggs, then bring to a boil.

  3. Serve in a sauce tureen.

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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + fishtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Hard-boiled eggs
Mashed yolks and whites give the sauce body and a rich, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the fish water into a sauce that holds together.
Fish water
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour slurry into the fish water. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold water before it goes into hot liquid. Added dry or lumpy, starch clumps and the sauce turns grainy. Starch thickens properly only once the liquid is heated and stirred, so the slurry should be fully blended first.

“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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