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Sauce

Drawn Butter Sauce

A sauce made by melting butter, adding flour, and gradually stirring in boiling water until thickened, finished with butter pieces.

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

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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat without browning.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the boiling water while stirring continuously.

  4. Cook the mixture until it thickens.

Serve

  1. When serving, add the small pieces of butter to the sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding flavor and a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the hot water, giving it body.
Boiling water
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which the flour thickens into a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Melting the butter without browning. Butter browns quickly over heat, and browned milk solids change the sauce's flavor and color. Keeping the heat low lets the butter melt gently so the flour can cook smoothly into the sauce.

“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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