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Melted Butter Sauce

A sauce made by melting butter with flour and milk, thickened with water and optionally flavored.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Melted Butter Sauce

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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. In a pint saucepan, combine the butter, flour, and milk. Mix thoroughly.

  3. Add the water.

  4. Place the saucepan over heat, shaking it every minute until it begins to simmer.

  5. Let it stand quietly until it boils up, achieving a thickness similar to good cream.

Finish and adjust

  1. If desired, mix in flavoring essences like anchovy or mushroom.

  2. For pouring over vegetables, add a little more milk if needed.

  3. If the sauce oils, stir in a spoonful of cold water to correct it.

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 fat base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Milk
Adds liquid and creaminess to the sauce.

The step that matters

Shaking the saucepan over heat until it simmers. Constant gentle shaking keeps the flour and butter mixture from settling and scorching on the base while it heats. Heating too fast or without stirring can cause lumps or a burnt taste, so the sauce thickens evenly.

“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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