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Sauce

Melted Butter

A simple sauce made by whisking flour and salt with cold water, then heating and adding butter.

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

Why it works: Flour and butter 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix the flour and salt in a basin.

  2. Gradually add the cold water, stirring until smooth.

  3. Pour the mixture into a small saucepan.

Cook and finish

  1. Stir constantly over medium heat until it boils for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the butter, cut into small pieces, and stir until dissolved.

  3. Boil the sauce for an additional minute.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells and sets in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.
Cold water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens.

The step that matters

Stir constantly while the sauce boils. Flour starch thickens only once it is heated in liquid, and constant stirring keeps it evenly dispersed so it does not form lumps or scorch on the base of the pan.

“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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