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Sauce

Melted Butter, or Butter Sauce

A simple sauce made by cooking equal parts butter and flour, then adding liquid to reach a creamy consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Melted Butter, or Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix equal amounts of butter and flour in a saucepan over low heat until it gently boils.

  2. Add enough water or stock to reach a consistency similar to good cream.

  3. If the mixture is not perfectly smooth, strain it, but do not let it boil again.

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
Provides fat and richness, and carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid, giving it body.
Water or stock
Adds liquid to loosen the thickened base to a pourable, creamy consistency.

The step that matters

Do not let the sauce boil again. Once flour has thickened the sauce, further boiling can break down the starch and let the butter separate, leaving the sauce thin and 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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