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Sauce

English Melted Butter

A simple sauce made by melting butter, adding flour, water, and seasoning.

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 ↓

English Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux and sauce

  1. Melt half of the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Mix in the flour smoothly off the heat.

  3. Gradually add the water.

  4. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly for five minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Season with salt and pepper.

  2. Add the remaining butter cut into small pieces off the heat.

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 + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 rich flavour and fat, and the cold pieces finished off the heat give the sauce a glossy body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the remaining butter off the heat. Cold butter added off the heat melts gently and emulsifies into the sauce. Over direct heat, butter can separate into oily droplets and lose its smooth gloss.

“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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