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Nasturtium Sauce

A sauce made from butter, water, flour, and pickled nasturtium seeds.

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

Nasturtium Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the butter into small bits and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the water with a little flour to make a stiff batter, then pour the batter over the butter.

Cook the sauce

  1. Hold the saucepan over high heat, shaking it until the butter melts.

  2. Allow the sauce to just boil, then remove it from the heat.

  3. Thicken the sauce with the pickled nasturtium seeds.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Flour + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,652 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
Provides the bulk of the sauce, adding richness and smooth body as it melts.
Flour
Its starch thickens the water mixture when heated, giving the sauce body.
Pickled nasturtium seeds
Their vinegar brings sharp acidity that cuts the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Shaking the saucepan over high heat until the butter just boils. Constant shaking keeps the butter moving so it melts evenly without scorching at the base. Stopping once the sauce just boils matters because prolonged boiling can make a butter sauce separate into oil and solids.

“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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