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Sauce

Drawn Butter No. 1

A sauce made from butter, flour, and boiling water.

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 ↓

Drawn Butter No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, heat 1 tablespoon of butter.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until it is lightly browned, without burning.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and add the remaining tablespoon of butter.

  4. Strain the sauce and serve.

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
Carries flavor and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Cooked in the hot butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Boiling water
Forms the liquid base that the flour roux thickens into a sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour without burning. Cooking flour in butter until lightly browned develops a nutty flavor and gives the roux thickening power. If it darkens too far it turns bitter, and if it is not cooked enough the sauce tastes raw and floury.

“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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