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Sauce

Butter Sauce

A sauce made by combining butter, flour, and liquid to a smooth gravy.

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

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 ↓

Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub flour into three times the quantity of butter in a warm dish.

  2. Alternatively, place the mixture in a frying pan and stir in the flour when it bubbles.

  3. Stir until smooth and frothy.

  4. Add 1 pint of boiling water, milk, or cream to achieve the desired gravy consistency.

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 + 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 fat and richness, and carries the flour so it blends smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with fat, forming a roux that sets the gravy's body.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, shaping the final gravy consistency.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the butter until smooth and frothy. The flour must be fully blended and cooked in the fat. Stirring prevents lumps, and heating the flour in the butter removes its raw taste before liquid is added.

“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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