Skip to main content
Sauce

Norfolk Sauce, or Rich Melted Butter Without Flour

A sauce made by boiling water, adding butter, stirring until dissolved, then shaking until thick and smooth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Norfolk Sauce, or Rich Melted Butter Without Flour

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put water into a small saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the butter and stir until completely dissolved.

  3. Remove from heat and shake the saucepan until the sauce is thick and smooth.

  4. Do not allow the sauce to boil after adding the butter.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat and richness, and melts into a smooth, glossy sauce.

The step that matters

Do not let the sauce boil after adding the butter. Boiling can break the emulsion of melted butter and water, separating the fat so the sauce turns greasy and grainy instead of smooth.

“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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes