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Sauce

Melted Butter' Sauce

A sauce made by melting butter, stirring in flour, and adding water, optionally flavored for fish or pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Melted Butter' Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour until smooth.

  3. Gradually add ¾ cup of cold water, stirring until the sauce boils and thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. For fish, add 1 tablespoon of anchovy sauce, 1 teaspoon of chopped parsley, and season with salt and pepper.

  2. For pudding, sweeten with castor sugar and add ¼ cup of sherry or treacle if serving with treacle pudding.

  3. For a smoother sauce, stir in an additional 1 tablespoon of butter just before serving.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Anchovy + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Melts to form the fat base that gives the sauce a rich flavour and smooth mouthfeel.
All-purpose flour
Mixed with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce as it heats.
Cold water
Liquid that, heated with the roux, swells the starch and thickens the sauce into a pourable body.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water. Adding the water gradually while stirring keeps the flour lumps from forming. The sauce must then boil so the starch fully swells and thickens it.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, anchovy, sauce, fish, pepper, sugar):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, anchovy, sauce, fish, pepper, sugar. 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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