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Sauce

Melted Butter

A simple sauce made by combining butter, flour, water, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Melted Butter

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. In a clean saucepan over medium heat, combine 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of flour.

  2. Stir until bubbling.

  3. Gradually stir in 2 cups of boiling water, ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt, and ⅛ teaspoon of white pepper.

  4. Continue stirring until boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. Once boiling, move the saucepan to the side of the heat to keep warm without boiling.

  2. Stir in 3 tablespoons of butter one at a time, ensuring each is fully mixed before adding the next.

  3. Serve the sauce in a hot sauceboat.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + white peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

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

Butter
Adds richness and a silky, smooth mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter one piece at a time off the heat. Adding butter gradually to a warm, not boiling, liquid lets it emulsify smoothly. Boiling or adding it all at once can cause it to separate and turn greasy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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