Skip to main content
Sauce

Melted Butter

A simple sauce made by dissolving butter in a flour and salt mixture.

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 and salt with the cold water until smooth.

  2. Pour the mixture into a small clean saucepan.

Cook and serve

  1. Stir constantly over medium heat until it boils for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the butter and stir until fully dissolved.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil for 1 minute and serve immediately.

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 water as its starch swells when heated, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness, a smooth glossy finish, and buttery flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir constantly while the mixture heats and boils. Flour must be kept moving as it heats so its starch swells evenly. Stopping can let lumps form in the thickened sauce.

“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 sauce recipes

for Fish 3White 3 See all 103 →

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