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Sauce

Sometimes Called Drawn Butter

A sauce made by mixing butter, flour, and cold water, then simmering.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sometimes Called Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the butter into pieces and mix it with the flour until well combined.

  2. Place the mixture in a covered saucepan.

  3. Add the cold water and cover the saucepan.

Cook

  1. Set the saucepan in a larger pan of boiling water.

  2. Shake the saucepan continuously until the mixture melts and begins to simmer.

  3. Let it rest until it boils up.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Butter
Provides the fat that forms the rich, smooth body of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter slightly so it holds together rather than separating.
Cold water
Adds moisture and helps the butter emulsify as it heats gently.

The step that matters

Shake the saucepan continuously while it heats. Constant shaking spreads heat evenly and keeps the butter from scorching or separating before it melts and emulsifies into a smooth sauce.

“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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