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Sauce

Melted Butter

A sauce made by melting butter, adding flour, then gradually whisking in cold water and simmering.

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. Melt the butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir over medium heat for one minute to cook the flour.

  3. Gradually add the cold water, stirring continuously until it boils.

  4. Add salt to taste and let it boil slowly for about three minutes.

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
Adds richness and flavour, and gives the sauce a smooth base once melted.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquid, giving it body.
Cold water
Forms the liquid that the flour thickens into a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water gradually. Adding the liquid slowly while stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed. Dumping it in at once can form lumps that are hard to smooth out once the sauce thickens.

“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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