Skip to main content
Main

Hot Sauce

A thickened sauce made from flour, salt, boiling water, butter, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Hot Sauce

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 ↓

Hot Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the flour and salt together.

  2. Gradually add the boiling water while stirring.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes.

Finish

  1. Remove from heat and add the butter in small pieces.

  2. Stir in the wine.

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).

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Flour + winetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,435 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

Flour
Its starch thickens the sauce as it heats in the liquid.
Boiling water
Hydrates the flour so its starch can swell and thicken the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy, smooth finish to the sauce.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiling water while stirring. Adding hot liquid slowly while stirring lets the flour disperse evenly, which prevents lumps from forming as the starch thickens.

“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.

More hot sauce recipes

for Meats 4 See all 8 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes