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Sauce

Melted Butter

A sauce made by melting butter with cream, flour, and hot water.

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 cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter

  1. In a saucepan, combine ¼ pound of butter and 2 teaspoons of cream.

  2. Shake the saucepan over a clear fire until the butter is completely melted, shaking it in one direction only.

  3. Alternatively, mix 1 teaspoon of flour with a large piece of butter in a bowl.

Make the sauce

  1. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan and add 2 tablespoons of hot water.

  2. Set the saucepan on the fire and let it boil quickly, stirring in one direction.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately once ready.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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
Provides fat and rich flavour as the base that melts into the sauce.
Flour
Its starch swells when heated in liquid, thickening the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the butter.

The step that matters

Boiling and stirring the mixture. Flour starch swells and thickens when heated in liquid, but if it is not kept moving it can clump and form lumps. Stirring steadily in one direction disperses the starch evenly as the mixture boils.

“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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