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Sauce

Drawn-Butter Sauce

A sauce made by melting butter, whisking in flour, and adding boiling water to create a smooth, seasoned liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Drawn-Butter Sauce

Why it works: Flour and butter 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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour with a wooden spoon to form a smooth paste.

  3. Gradually pour in the boiling water while stirring well.

  4. Bring to a boil, season with pepper and salt, and serve.

Finish

  1. For an acidic taste, add a few drops of vinegar.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Flour and butter 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
Melts to form the fat base that carries the sauce's flavour and richness.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Boiling water
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, thinned gradually into the flour paste.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidic note that brightens the rich butter flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the boiling water. Pouring the water in gradually while stirring well keeps the flour paste smooth. Adding it all at once can trap lumps of flour that are hard to whisk out.

“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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