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Sauce

Drawn Butter

A sauce made by mixing flour, butter, and cold water, simmered until melted, optionally with eggs for fish or oysters for fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and oyster work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 496 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the drawn butter

  1. Rub 2 teaspoons of flour into ¼ pound of butter.

  2. Add 5 teaspoons of cold water.

  3. Set the mixture in boiling water until it melts.

  4. Ensure the flour is thoroughly mixed into the butter to avoid lumps.

  5. When it begins to simmer, it is done.

  6. Do not place it on the stove to avoid frying the butter.

Serve

  1. If serving with fish, add finely chopped hard boiled eggs.

  2. If serving with boiled fowl, add oysters while simmering until heated 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. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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, fatty base that carries the flavour and gives the sauce its body.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and helps keep it smooth rather than separating.
Cold water
Helps the butter cool and emulsify slightly, keeping the sauce smooth and pourable.

The step that matters

Melting over boiling water, not on the stove. Butter fries and browns quickly over direct heat, which scorches the milk solids and turns the sauce bitter. Gentle indirect heat melts it evenly so the flour thickens smoothly without lumps.

“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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