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Melted Butter Sauce

A simple sauce made by melting butter, adding flour, hot water, salt, and white pepper.

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 flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Melted Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 2 ounces of butter over low heat.

  2. Gradually mix in 1 to 2 ounces of flour, stirring continuously until smooth.

  3. Slowly add ½ pint of hot water while stirring, and let it boil for a few minutes.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve and serve.

Make the richer sauce

  1. For a richer sauce, melt 1 ounce of butter and mix in 1 ounce of flour to form a paste.

  2. Add a pinch of salt and a little white pepper, then pour in ½ pint of hot water while stirring until it begins to boil.

  3. Add 2 more ounces of butter in pieces, stirring until melted.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + white peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

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
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour, and carries the sauce's fat.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells and sets in the hot liquid.
Hot water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the hot water gradually while stirring. Flour mixed with butter forms a paste that clumps if liquid is added too fast. Adding the hot water slowly and stirring keeps it smooth. Boiling then cooks the flour's starch, so the sauce thickens and loses its raw taste.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour):

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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