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Sauce

Drawn Butter Sauce

A sauce made by browning butter, adding flour, salt, pepper, and hot liquid.

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

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan until it turns golden brown.

  2. Add the flour, salt, and pepper, stirring to combine.

  3. Gradually add the hot water or stock, whisking until smooth.

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
Browns to give a nutty flavour and provides fat that carries richness into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquid, giving it body.
Hot water or stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which the flour thickens into a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Browning the butter. Butter that is heated too far turns from golden to burnt and bitter. Watching the colour closely lets the milk solids toast for a nutty flavour without scorching.

“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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