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Drawn Butter

Drawn butter is a butter sauce made by mixing flour, butter, and cold water, then heating over boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butter sauce

  1. Rub the flour into the butter until well combined.

  2. Add the cold water and mix thoroughly.

  3. Place the mixture in a saucepan over boiling water.

  4. Heat until it begins to simmer; then it is done.

Finish and serve

  1. For fish, stir in chopped boiled eggs and capers.

  2. For boiled fowl, add oysters while melting and cook through.

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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 base of the sauce and carries its rich flavour.
Flour
Thickens the butter so it clings to food rather than running off.
Cold water
Keeps the emulsion smooth and loosens the sauce as it heats.

The step that matters

Heat until it begins to simmer. Heating gently over boiling water melts the butter without letting it separate or scorch. Stop once it simmers, because prolonged heat can break the emulsion and make the sauce greasy.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Capersthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, oyster. 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.

More drawn butter recipes

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