Skip to main content
Main

Melted Butter Sauce

A sauce made by melting butter, adding flour, and simmering with water, optionally flavored with anchovy sauce or sweetened for pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Melted Butter Sauce

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 the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Pour in the cold water and stir until the sauce boils and thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. For a smoother sauce, stir in an additional ¼ oz. of butter just before serving.

  2. If serving with fish, add anchovy sauce, parsley, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. If serving with pudding, sweeten with castor sugar and add sherry if desired.

  4. For treacle pudding, use treacle to sweeten.

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. 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
Adds richness and flavour, and a smooth finish when stirred in just before serving.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Cold water
Forms the sauce base, which thickens as it comes to the boil.

The step that matters

Pour in the cold water and stir until the sauce boils and thickens. Flour thickens a liquid only when it is heated enough for its starch to swell. Stirring while the sauce comes to the boil keeps the flour evenly dispersed and prevents lumps.

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.

More melted butter sauce recipes

for Fish 3White 3 See all 103 →

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes