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Butter Sauce

A simple sauce made by whisking butter, flour, and boiling water, optionally flavored with capers, shrimp, mustard, or other ingredients.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Butter Sauce

Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook, stirring constantly, until it boils briskly.

  3. Quickly add the boiling water while stirring constantly until smooth.

  4. Add any optional ingredients to flavor the sauce.

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 + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 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
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid, giving body.
Boiling water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Quickly add the boiling water while stirring constantly. Flour starch clumps when liquid is added to it unevenly. Adding the boiling water quickly and stirring constantly disperses the starch so it thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the capers

The recipe marks capers as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour):

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersthe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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