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Sauce

Drawn Butter Sauce

A sauce made by whisking butter, flour, water, salt, pepper, and lemon juice into a smooth, creamy consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Drawn Butter Sauce

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Drawn Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of flour until smooth.

  2. Gradually add ½ pint of boiling water, stirring constantly until boiling.

  3. Stir in ½ teaspoon of salt, another tablespoon of butter, a dash of pepper, and the juice of ½ lemon.

  4. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.

  5. If the sauce is too thick, add more hot milk or water until it reaches a thick cream consistency.

  6. For a creamier sauce, substitute milk for water and omit the lemon.

  7. For a curry sauce, season with curry powder.

  8. If serving with fish, add chopped hard-boiled eggs.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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
Melted with flour to form a roux that thickens the sauce and carries flavour.
Flour
Combined with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter flavour.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiling water while stirring constantly. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour dispersed so the roux blends smoothly instead of forming lumps. Stirring until boiling lets the starch swell fully and thicken the sauce.

“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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