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Sauce

Butter Sauce

A sauce made with boiled eggs, fish water, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Butter Sauce

Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs until the yolks are hard, then mash them smooth.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the fish water and thicken it with a little flour mixed with cold water.

  2. Stir in the butter and the mashed eggs, then bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve in a sauce tureen.

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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + fishtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Eggs
Mashed hard-boiled yolks and whites give the sauce body and a rich, slightly grainy texture.
Fish water
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the other ingredients are thickened into.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and a silky finish.
Flour
Starch thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce its coating consistency.

The step that matters

Thicken the fish water before adding the butter and eggs. Flour mixed with cold water disperses without lumps and thickens when heated, so the liquid should be thickened first. Adding flour directly to hot liquid can clump, and the sauce's texture depends on a smooth, evenly thickened base.

“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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