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Rich Melted Butter

A buttery sauce made by melting butter with flour, salt, and water.

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

Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Rich Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix flour and salt with cold water in a clean saucepan until smooth.

  2. Add butter cut into small pieces.

  3. Shake saucepan continuously until mixture is almost boiling.

  4. Simmer for 2 to 3 minutes without boiling.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 fat and rich flavor, and emulsifies into the sauce as it melts.
Flour
Thickens the water and butter mixture so the sauce holds together and stays smooth.

The step that matters

Shake the saucepan continuously while the butter melts. Constant movement keeps the butter melting evenly and emulsifying into the water instead of separating or overheating. If the mixture boils hard, the butterfat can split out and the sauce turns greasy.

“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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