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Sauce

Drawn Butter for Boiled Fish, Etc

A sauce made by softening butter, adding flour, boiling cold water, and mixing in chopped hard‑boiled eggs, seasoned with coarse sea salt.

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 ↓

Drawn Butter for Boiled Fish, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soften the butter without melting it.

  2. Rub the flour into the softened butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour in the cold water and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the finely chopped hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savory flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated with the liquid.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body, mild richness, and texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Soften the butter without melting it. Softened butter blends with flour into a smooth paste that disperses evenly in the water. Melted butter separates from the flour, which can leave lumps and an uneven 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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