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Sauce

Drawn Butter

A simple sauce made by whisking butter and flour, then adding boiling water and salt.

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 ↓

Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter and flour together.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the mixture, stirring constantly until it thickens.

  3. Add the salt and stir to combine.

  4. Remove from heat as soon as it thickens.

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).

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
Adds richness and flavour, and carries the sauce's fat-based taste.
Flour
Its starch swells in the hot liquid and thickens the sauce.
Boiling water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling water over the mixture, stirring constantly. Stirring constantly as the boiling water goes in keeps the flour dispersed, so lumps don't form. The starch swells and thickens as it heats, so the sauce should come off the heat as soon as it thickens rather than keep cooking.

“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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