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Sauce

Butter Sauce or Plain Melted Butter

A simple sauce made by melting butter, adding flour, and gradually incorporating cold water, then seasoning with salt.

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

Butter Sauce or Plain Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt 2 ounces of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add 1.5 ounces of flour and stir with a wooden spoon until smooth.

Thicken the sauce

  1. Gradually add ⅔ pint of cold water, stirring continuously.

  2. Cook over heat until the sauce thickens.

Season and finish

  1. Add salt to taste.

  2. Optionally, stir in an additional ounce of butter for extra richness.

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).

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
Coats the flour and adds richness and flavour to the finished sauce.
Flour
Its starch swells in the liquid and thickens the sauce as it cooks.
Water
Forms the liquid base that the flour starch thickens into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cold water while stirring continuously. Flour starch must be dispersed evenly before the liquid heats. Adding water quickly or without stirring lets lumps form that are hard to smooth out later.

“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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