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Sauce

French Melted Butter

A sauce made by whisking egg yolks, adding hot melted butter, gently heating, and seasoning with lemon juice or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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French Melted Butter

Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

French Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Whisk the egg yolks until well beaten.

  2. Gradually pour in the hot melted butter while stirring briskly.

  3. Transfer the mixture back to a saucepan and heat gently, shaking it over the fire without allowing it to boil.

  4. Add a little lemon juice or vinegar and serve immediately.

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 + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and thicken the sauce into a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Provides the fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the sauce its rich texture.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture gently without boiling. Egg yolks thicken with gentle heat but scramble if they get too hot. Boiling can curdle the sauce and break the emulsion, so it should be shaken over low heat only until it thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg. 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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