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Sauce

Drawn Butter Sauce

A sauce made by mixing butter, flour, and boiling water, seasoned with salt and pepper, optionally with egg or oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Beat the butter until smooth.

  2. Mix the butter with the flour and boiling water.

  3. Set the mixture over the fire and stir constantly until it boils.

  4. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  5. If desired, stir in the chopped hard-boiled egg or oysters.

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. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Boiling water
Forms the liquid base that the butter and flour thicken into a sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring while the mixture comes to a boil. Flour can clump or scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unstirred. Constant stirring disperses the starch so it thickens evenly into a smooth sauce.

“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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