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Sauce

Melted Butter

A sauce made by melting butter, adding flour, water, and salt, then stirring until blended and boiled.

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

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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the butter into small pieces and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Sprinkle the flour over the butter and add the water and salt.

  3. Stir constantly until the ingredients are melted and blended.

  4. Allow it to just boil 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
Provides fat and richness, and melts to form the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and water, giving the sauce body and a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Allow it to just boil before serving. Flour thickens as it heats with the liquid; stirring constantly prevents lumps and scorching, and stopping at a gentle boil keeps the sauce smooth rather than overcooked.

“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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