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Sauce

Melted or Drawn Butter

A simple butter sauce made with flour, water or milk, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Melted or Drawn Butter

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 or Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a bowl, combine flour and salt.

  2. Gradually add water or milk, stirring until smooth.

Make the sauce

  1. Transfer to a tin cup or saucepan and place in boiling water.

  2. Stir as it warms, then add butter gradually, stirring until melted and combined.

  3. Boil for one minute.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 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).

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 liquid as its starch swells and sets when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Water or milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens; milk adds richness.

The step that matters

Stirring the water or milk into the flour until smooth. Flour clumps when liquid meets it unevenly. Adding the liquid gradually while stirring disperses the starch so the sauce thickens evenly without 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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