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Sauce

Melted Butter Sauce

A simple sauce made by melting butter, adding flour, and simmering with water, optionally finished with butter, anchovy sauce, or sweeteners.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Melted Butter Sauce

Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Melted Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 1 ounce of butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in 1/2 ounce of flour until smooth.

  3. Pour in 1 1/2 cups of cold water and stir until the sauce boils and thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. For a smoother sauce, stir in 1/4 ounce of butter just before serving.

  2. If serving with fish, add 1 tablespoon of anchovy sauce, 1 teaspoon of chopped parsley, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. If serving with pudding, sweeten with castor sugar and add 1/3 cup of sherry if desired, or use treacle for treacle pudding.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Anchovy + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. 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
Melted fat that coats the flour and carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Starch that thickens the liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce once it boils.
Cold water
Liquid base that the flour-butter mixture thickens as it heats.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water. Pouring the cold water into the butter and flour mixture all at once and stirring well helps prevent lumps. Starch granules swell and thicken only when the sauce reaches a boil, so the sauce must be brought fully to a boil to reach full thickness.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, anchovy, sauce, fish, pepper, sugar):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, anchovy, sauce, fish, pepper, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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