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Sauce

Melted Butter

A sauce made by melting butter with flour, milk, and water until thick.

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 milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Cut the butter into small pieces for easier melting.

  2. In a pint stewpan, combine the butter, flour, and milk. Mix thoroughly, then add the water.

Cook

  1. Heat over medium heat, shaking the pan every minute until it begins to simmer.

  2. Let it boil gently until it reaches the thickness of good cream.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Melts to form the rich base of the sauce and adds flavor and smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and helps form a smooth, thick sauce with the flour.

The step that matters

Shaking the pan while heating. Flour mixed into melted butter can clump or scorch on the bottom of the pan if left still. Shaking the pan every minute keeps the mixture moving and evenly heated, so the sauce thickens smoothly as it comes to a simmer.

“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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