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Sauce

Melted Butter Sauce

A simple sauce made by melting butter, whisking in flour, adding warm water, and finishing with more butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Melted 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 ↓

Melted Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt half the butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the warm water, stirring constantly.

  4. Add the remaining butter just before serving.

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).

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 and rich flavour, and the reserved portion added at the end keeps the sauce tasting fresh.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells and sets when mixed with liquid and heated.
Warm water
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which the flour thickens into a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Gradually add the warm water, stirring constantly.. Flour starch clumps when a large amount of liquid hits it at once. Adding the water slowly while stirring lets each grain disperse, giving a smooth sauce without lumps.

“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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