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Sauce

Butter Sauce. No. 1

A simple butter sauce made with butter, flour, and boiling water or hot whey, seasoned with salt and optional aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Butter Sauce. No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter (or butter and oil) in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Mix in the flour and boil for a few seconds.

  3. Gradually add the boiling water or hot whey while stirring continuously.

  4. Boil for a few minutes until thickened.

  5. Flavor with salt and any desired seasonings.

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).

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + wheytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + wheytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 coats the flour so it blends smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce as its starch swells when boiled.
Boiling water or hot whey
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the liquid gradually while stirring. Adding the liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, whey):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, whey. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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