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Sauce

Drawn Butter Sauce

A sauce made by mixing butter, flour, hot water, and salt, then simmering until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Drawn Butter Sauce

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 ↓

Drawn Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a tin cup, mix the flour with 2 tablespoons of the butter.

  2. Slowly stir in the hot water.

  3. Place the tin cup into a larger pan with boiling water.

Thicken and finish

  1. Stir until the mixture thickens or begins to boil.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the remaining butter and salt.

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).

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

Flour
Its starch swells when heated and thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel, and carries the buttery flavor.
Hot water
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the flour thickens.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture thickens or begins to boil. Flour starch only thickens once it is hot enough to swell. Stirring constantly keeps heat even and prevents lumps from forming on the bottom of the cup.

“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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