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Sauce

Heated Butter

A simple sauce made by melting butter, whisking in flour, and adding water until thickened.

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 ↓

Heated Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Whisk in the flour until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the water, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately, keeping it warm until ready to use.

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 for richness and a smooth, rounded flavor in the sauce.
Flour
Its starch swells in the liquid and thickens the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the water gradually while stirring constantly. Adding the liquid slowly and stirring keeps the flour starch dispersed and evenly hydrated, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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