Skip to main content
Sauce

French Melted Butter

A sauce made by whisking egg yolks with melted butter, lemon juice or vinegar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
French Melted Butter

Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

French Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the yolks of two fresh eggs in a bowl.

  2. Gradually stir in ½ cup of boiling melted butter.

  3. Remove from heat and shake the pan over the fire for an instant.

Finish and serve

  1. Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar and serve immediately.

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 + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and thicken the sauce as their proteins set gently with heat.
Melted butter
Supplies fat for richness and a smooth, silky texture once emulsified with the yolks.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery flavour and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the boiling melted butter. Adding the hot butter slowly lets the yolks absorb it into a stable emulsion. Pouring it in too fast can overheat the yolks, causing them to scramble or the sauce to split.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter. 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.

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes