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Sauce

Rich Melted Butter

A buttery sauce made by blending flour, salt, water, and butter until smooth and simmered.

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

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 ↓

Rich Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the flour and salt with the cold water in a bowl until smooth.

  2. Pour the mixture into a clean saucepan.

  3. Add the butter cut into small pieces.

  4. Shake the saucepan continuously until the sauce is blended and nearly boiling.

  5. Let it simmer for 2 to 3 minutes without allowing it to boil.

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).

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
Provides fat and richness, and its melting into the water creates a smooth, emulsified sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid, giving it body.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce from boiling. Once the sauce reaches a boil, the butter can separate and the emulsion breaks, leaving it greasy instead of smooth. Gentle simmering keeps it blended.

“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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