Skip to main content
Sauce

Melted Butter

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

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

Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with the water to create a smooth batter.

  2. Pour the batter into a saucepan and add the butter and salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Stir continuously until the butter melts and the mixture is smooth.

  2. Allow it to boil for 1-2 minutes, then serve.

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

Flour
Thickens the liquid and gives the mixture body as its starch sets with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel, and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Stir continuously until the butter melts and the mixture is smooth. Flour mixed with liquid can clump or scorch on the bottom of a pan if left unstirred. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the starch dispersed, so the mixture becomes smooth rather than lumpy.

“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.

More melted butter recipes

Sauce 103Rich 9French 5Sauce for Fish 3White Sauce 3 See all 95 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes