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Dessert

Drawn Butter

A sauce made by whisking butter and flour, then adding boiling water until thickened, optionally flavored with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the butter and flour in a bowl.

  2. Stir in ½ cup of boiling water until smooth.

  3. Pour ½ cup of boiling water into a small saucepan and place it over high heat.

  4. Once boiling, add the butter and flour mixture, stirring until thickened.

  5. Season to taste and serve immediately.

  6. Add lemon juice for extra flavor if desired.

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.

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 + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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
Adds richness and a rounded, buttery flavor to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, pourable sauce as it heats.
Lemon juice
Adds brightness through acidity to balance the rich butter.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture to the boiling water. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly. Stirring the mixture in steadily while the water boils helps the starch disperse and thicken smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe 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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