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Sauce

Drawn Butter

Drawn Butter is a butter sauce made by mixing flour with butter, then melting with milk or water over a double boiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the flour into the butter until well mixed.

  2. Place the mixture in a saucepan with the milk or water.

  3. Set the saucepan in a dish of boiling water.

  4. Shake it well until the butter melts and is near boiling.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 gives the sauce its rich flavor and smooth, pourable texture.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter slightly and helps keep it from separating into layers.
Milk or water
Adds liquid that helps the butter blend into a smooth emulsion as it heats.

The step that matters

Shake it well until the butter melts and is near boiling. Heating too hard or leaving it too long can cause the butter to separate into fat and liquid. Gentle heat in the boiling water bath and constant shaking keep the butter and liquid blended 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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