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Sauce

Melted Butter

A sauce made by melting butter, adding flour, and gradually incorporating cold water, then seasoning with salt.

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

Why it works: Butter and flour 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 roux

  1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir over medium heat for one minute to cook the flour.

Thicken and season

  1. Gradually add the cold water while stirring until it boils.

  2. Add salt to taste and let it boil slowly for about three minutes.

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. 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 fat for richness, smooth mouthfeel and flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the cold water while stirring. Flour starch must be dispersed evenly before it swells. Adding the water slowly and stirring constantly prevents lumps and gives a smooth, even thickening as the sauce comes to the boil.

“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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