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Sauce

Melted-butter Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Melted-butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. Gradually add the flour, stirring continuously to avoid lumps.

  3. Slowly pour in the water or milk, continuing to stir until the mixture boils.

  4. Cook for 1 minute after boiling, then remove from heat.

Finish

  1. For a richer sauce, add an extra tablespoon of butter or a spoonful of cream 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.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Adds fat and rich flavour to the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the sauce body.
Water or milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the liquid gradually while stirring. Pouring the liquid in slowly and stirring constantly lets the starch disperse evenly before it thickens. Adding it all at once or skipping the stirring causes lumps that are hard to remove.

“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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