Skip to main content
Sauce

Drawn Butter Sauce

A sauce made from butter, flour, water, salt, pepper, vinegar or lemon juice, and optional parsley.

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

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Drawn Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1-2 minutes until lightly golden.

  3. Gradually add the hot water, whisking continuously until smooth.

  4. Add the salt and cook until the sauce thickens.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the vinegar or lemon juice.

  6. For Parsley Sauce, add the chopped parsley before serving.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 rich flavour as the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter and liquid.
Hot water
Forms the liquid that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter flavour.

The step that matters

Gradually add the hot water while whisking. Adding liquid slowly while whisking keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce becomes smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, flour, vinegar, sauce):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Jalapenofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, flour, vinegar, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

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