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Sauce

Drawn Butter

A sauce made by mixing butter with flour, milk or water, and optional minced vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the drawn butter

  1. In a bowl, rub together the flour and butter until well mixed.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan and add the milk or water.

  3. Place the saucepan in a double boiler and stir well until it comes to a boil.

Add the vegetables

  1. If using vegetables, boil them first, mince, and gradually add to the drawn butter.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat and rich flavor, forming the body of the sauce as it melts.
Flour
Thickens the butter as it heats, giving the sauce body and a smooth texture.
Milk or water
Loosens the flour-butter mixture into a pourable liquid sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring while heating in the double boiler. Gentle, constant stirring over indirect heat keeps the flour evenly dispersed and prevents lumps or scorching. Direct high heat can separate the butter fat and burn the milk solids, so the sauce turns grainy or bitter.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, parsley, celery, mint):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, parsley, celery, mint. 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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