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Sauce

Drawn Butter

A sauce made by mixing butter, flour, and hot water, then simmering until melted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the butter into pieces and mix it with the flour until well combined.

  2. Place the mixture in a covered saucepan.

  3. Add the hot water and cover the saucepan.

Melt and simmer

  1. Set the saucepan in a larger pan filled with boiling water.

  2. Shake the saucepan continuously in the same direction until the butter is melted and begins to simmer.

  3. Let it rest until it boils up.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Melts to form the rich, golden fat that carries the dish's flavor.
Flour
Binds with the melted butter so it stays smooth and does not separate.
Hot water
Adds moisture and helps the butter melt gently without scorching.

The step that matters

Shaking the saucepan continuously. Constant shaking keeps the butter and flour evenly mixed and prevents them from settling and scorching on the base. Moving in one direction helps the emulsion stay smooth as the butter melts.

“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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