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Sauce

Drawn Butter or Egg Sauce

A sauce made by mixing butter and flour, then adding boiling water, and optionally chopped hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 or Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Bring the water to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter with the flour until smooth.

  3. Stir the butter-flour mixture into the boiling water.

  4. Let it boil for a few minutes, stirring constantly.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with salt and parsley if desired.

  2. For egg sauce, add the chopped hard-boiled eggs to the sauce before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Water
Forms the liquid base that the butter and flour thicken.
Hard boiled eggs
Add texture and body when chopped into the sauce for egg sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter and flour into the boiling water. Stirring constantly while the mixture boils keeps the flour dispersed and starch swelling evenly, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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