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Sauce

Melted Butter

A simple sauce made by whisking flour and salt into cold water, then adding butter to create a smooth, buttery sauce.

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

Prepare

  1. In a basin, mix the flour and salt.

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

  3. Pour the mixture into a small saucepan.

Make the sauce

  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 1 more minute and 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 water into a smooth sauce as it heats and boils.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture when melted into the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly while the mixture comes to a boil. Flour mixed with cold water can clump or scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unstirred. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed so it thickens evenly into a smooth sauce.

“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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