Butter Sauce
-Mrs. Granlees.
Work two tablespoonfuls of flour and one-half cup of butter until light; to this add gradually one-half pint of boiling water; stir constantly until it comes to a boil. Take from the fire immediately and serve. A large tablespoonful of lemon juice and a pinch of cayenne may be added if you desire it.
A drawn-butter sauce of the old American type: heavy on butter, light on flour, and finished in about five minutes. The proportions are unusual by modern standards and the technique repays attention.
- The measuresHalf a pint of boiling water is one cup (8 fl oz); half a cup of butter is 4 oz, or one stick. Two tablespoons of flour to a full stick of butter is far richer than a standard roux, so the sauce sets loosely rather than into a thick coating.
- The hinge: add the water graduallyThe flour and butter are creamed cold, not cooked, so the water must go in a little at a time with constant stirring or the paste will seize into lumps. Once the mixture is smooth, the rest can go in faster.
- Take it off at the boilThe instruction to remove it the instant it boils is deliberate. Held over heat, a mixture this butter-heavy is liable to separate and turn greasy. A single bubbling-up will not, however, fully cook out the raw taste of the flour.
- Raw flour flavourBecause the flour is never toasted, the sauce keeps a pale, floury note that some cooks dislike. Cooking the butter and flour together for a minute before adding water gives a cleaner flavour, at the cost of the very white colour the original intends.
- Lemon and cayenneAdd the lemon juice off the heat, after the sauce has stopped boiling, so the acid does not encourage separation. "A pinch" is not a fixed measure; an eighth of a teaspoon or so, to taste.
- SaltNone is specified, which may assume salted butter. With unsalted butter the sauce will taste flat; season at the end, after the lemon.
- YieldAbout a cup and a half, enough to sauce four to six portions of boiled fish or plain vegetables. It does not reheat well and should be made just before serving.
Butter sauces of this kind — creamed butter and flour let down with boiling water — were a common everyday sauce in nineteenth-century English and American kitchens, generally filed under "drawn butter," and melted-butter sauces of one form or another appear in English cookbooks well before that. They were the household answer to the French white sauces: no stock, no milk, no long reduction, just the two things every kitchen had. The attribution to Mrs. Granlees reflects the compiled, community-contributed structure of many turn-of-the-century American cookbooks, where recipes were credited to the women of a church, club or subscription list rather than to a single author.