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Sauce

Drawn Butter, or Melted Butter

A butter sauce made by drawing butter with flour and water, optionally flavored with eggs, nasturtium, capers, or oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Drawn Butter, or Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butter sauce

  1. Rub 2 teaspoons of flour into ½ cup of butter until well combined.

  2. Add 5 tablespoons of cold water and set the mixture into boiling water.

  3. Heat until it begins to simmer, then remove from heat.

  4. Avoid simmering directly on coals to prevent frying the oil.

Add to the dish

  1. If serving with fish, add chopped eggs and nasturtium or capers.

  2. If serving with boiled fowl, add oysters while simmering and heat through.

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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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
Forms the rich base of the sauce and carries its flavor.
Flour
Thickens the butter as it heats, giving the sauce body and keeping it from separating.
Cold water
Adds moisture and helps the butter emulsify into a smooth, pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Avoid simmering directly on coals. Direct heat from coals can overheat the butter and fry its milk solids and oil, leading to a burnt, separated sauce. Gentle heat in boiling water keeps it smooth.

“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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