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Sauce

Melted Butter

A butter-based sauce thickened with flour, arrowroot, or potato starch and liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Melted Butter

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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Break up the butter in a bowl and mix in the thickening until well combined.

  2. Add the cold liquid to the mixture in a saucepan.

  3. Alternatively, sprinkle the thickening on top of the cold liquid and let it sit for 20 minutes before heating.

  4. Heat the mixture over low heat, stirring until it thickens.

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
Provides fat and rich flavor to the sauce.
Thickening
Starch that swells when heated and thickens the liquid into a sauce.
Liquid
Forms the body of the sauce that the thickening sets into.

The step that matters

Heat over low heat while stirring. Starch thickens as it heats, but high heat or no stirring can scorch the butter or cause lumps. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

“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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