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Sauce

Drawk Butter Sauces

A roux-based sauce made with butter or beef fat, flour, water, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Drawk Butter Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter or beef fat over medium heat until it boils.

  2. Add the flour and stir as it cooks for a minute.

  3. Gradually add the water, stirring continuously.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Finish and vary

  1. For added flavor, use 1 tablespoon of beef fat and add ½ tablespoon of butter just before serving.

  2. For milk sauce, substitute water with milk.

  3. For brown sauce, brown the fat and flour before adding water as above.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 or beef fat
Carries the flavor and fat that the flour cooks into, giving the sauce richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the water. Pouring liquid in all at once or without stirring lets the flour clump into lumps. Adding it gradually while stirring keeps the starch evenly dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly.

“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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