Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓
Drawn Butter Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan until it bubbles.
Add 1 tablespoon of flour and stir with a whisk until the flour is cooked but not browned.
Mix in ½ cup of water or white stock and strain through a sieve.
Stir in 1 teaspoon of butter cut into pieces.
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.
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 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
- Forms the fat base of the roux and, finished in small pieces, gives the sauce richness and gloss.
- Flour
- Thickens the sauce by swelling with the liquid once cooked in the melted butter.
- Water or white stock
- Supplies the liquid that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.
The step that matters
Cooking the flour in the butter. Stirring the flour into the melted butter and cooking it without browning removes its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. Browning changes the flavour and colour, and adding liquid too early can leave lumps.
“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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