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Sauce

Drawn-butter Sauce

A buttery sauce made by melting butter, adding flour, boiling water, and finishing with remaining butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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. In a saucepan, melt half the butter over medium heat until it bubbles.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour and stir well for 2 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and gradually add the boiling water, stirring constantly until thick and smooth.

  4. Bring the sauce to a boil while stirring constantly.

  5. Return to low heat and add the remaining butter, cut into pieces, along with the salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. If the sauce is not completely smooth, strain it before serving.

  2. For a slightly acidic flavor, add a few drops of vinegar or lemon juice just 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.

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

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water to the roux. Adding the liquid gradually while stirring constantly keeps the flour evenly dispersed, preventing lumps and giving a smooth, thick 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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