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Sauce

Drawn-butter Sauce

A sauce made by mixing butter and flour, then adding water or stock and simmering.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Drawn-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 ↓

Drawn-butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, mix butter and flour until well combined.

  2. Add water or stock and cover the saucepan.

  3. Place the saucepan in a larger pot filled with boiling water.

  4. Shake constantly until the mixture is thoroughly melted.

  5. Remove from heat as soon as it comes to a boil.

  6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Melts into the liquid to give the sauce its rich fat and smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water or stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Water or stock
Forms the liquid base that the butter and flour are emulsified and thinned into.

The step that matters

Remove from heat as soon as it comes to a boil. Flour-thickened liquids reach full thickness when they boil, and continued heating can make the sauce thick, gluey or separated. Stopping promptly keeps it smooth.

“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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