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Sauce

Melted Butter

Melted butter is a sauce made by melting butter with flour, milk, and water until thick.

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 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

Prepare

  1. Cut the butter into small pieces for easier melting.

  2. In a pint saucepan, combine the butter, flour, and milk. Mix thoroughly and add the water.

Cook

  1. Hold the saucepan over the fire, shaking it gently every minute until it begins to simmer.

  2. Let it stand quietly and boil until it reaches the thickness of good cream.

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 richness, and melts to form the smooth base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat, giving the sauce body.
Milk
Adds moisture and mild flavour, combining with the flour to form a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Shaking gently and bringing to a simmer. Constant gentle shaking keeps the flour evenly dispersed so it does not clump or scorch on the bottom. Thickening happens as starch granules swell in the heated liquid, so the mixture must be moved steadily while heating.

“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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