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Sauce

Good Melted Butter

A sauce made by melting butter with flour, water, and 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 ↓

Good Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Roll the flour into the butter.

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

  3. Add the cold water and salt to the saucepan.

Cook and serve

  1. Shake the saucepan continuously over the heat until the butter melts and the sauce simmers.

  2. Serve immediately.

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
Melts to form the body and rich flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and water into a smoother, slightly lighter sauce.
Cold water
Dilutes the butter, so the sauce stays loose and does not separate into greasy fat.

The step that matters

Shaking the saucepan continuously over the heat. Constant movement keeps the butter, flour and water emulsifying evenly as the butter melts. Standing still lets the mixture separate or scorch on the base before it simmers.

“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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