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Melted Butter Sauce

A simple white sauce made by cooking a roux of butter and flour, then adding warm liquid and finishing with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 roux

  1. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan over moderate heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir to form a smooth paste.

  3. Reduce the heat and cook the roux gently for a few minutes without browning.

Add the liquid and finish

  1. Gradually add the warm water or milk and water mixture, stirring well.

  2. Increase the heat and continue stirring until the sauce is soft and creamy.

  3. Strain the sauce into a hot sauceboat.

  4. Just before serving, add 1 tablespoon of butter to melt into the sauce.

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
Forms the fat base of the roux and, added at the end, gives the sauce richness and a smooth finish.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the warm liquid, giving it body.
Milk and water
Provides the liquid that the roux thickens into a smooth, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Add the liquid gradually while stirring. Adding warm liquid to the roux slowly and stirring constantly lets the starch disperse evenly. Adding it all at once can leave lumps that are hard to smooth out.

“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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