Name: To Make Drawn Butter
Ingredients: ½ pint milk; 2 tablespoons wheat flour; ¼ pound sweet butter; ¼ teaspoon salt; ½ pint boiling water

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

To Make Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

In a clean saucepan, heat the milk over moderate heat.
In a bowl, mix the flour, butter, and salt until well combined.
Gradually stir in the boiling water until smooth.

Combine and simmer

Pour the mixture into the boiling milk, stirring constantly.
Let it simmer for at least five minutes until done.

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.

Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,002 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Milk: Forms the liquid base and gives the sauce a creamy body and mild flavor.
Wheat flour: Starch thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce structure.
Sweet butter: Adds fat for richness, smooth texture, and a rounded buttery flavor.

The step that matters

Pouring the flour mixture into the boiling milk while stirring constantly. Flour starch thickens when heated in liquid, but if the paste clumps or is added unevenly, dry pockets form lumps. Constant stirring disperses the starch so it hydrates and thickens evenly.

“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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To Make Drawn Butter