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Sauce

Drawn Butter

A buttery sauce made by mixing butter, flour, and boiling water, flavored with herbs and served with chopped hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butter sauce

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until creamy, adding salt if needed.

  2. Pour in the boiling water while stirring quickly, ensuring it doesn't boil.

  3. To prevent boiling, place the saucepan in a larger pot of boiling water and cover it, shaking frequently.

Finish and serve

  1. For added flavor, boil and finely chop the herbs, then mix them in just before serving.

  2. Serve immediately with the chopped hard-boiled eggs.

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).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 fat and richness, giving the sauce its smooth, creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the butter slightly so it clings to food rather than separating.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add texture and a mild, savory richness when chopped and served with the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the water from boiling when it is added. Boiling the butter-flour mixture can cause the fat to separate and the sauce to turn greasy or grainy. Gentle heat from a water bath keeps the emulsion smooth.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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