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Drawn-Butter Sauce
⅓ cup butter
1 pint boiling water
4 tablespoons flour
¼ teaspoon salt
Make a roux of four tablespoons of the butter and all of the flour. Gradually add the boiling water, stirring constantly over hot water, until the sauce comes to the boiling-point. Simmer until it is thick and smooth. When ready to serve, add salt and the remaining butter in small bits, beating constantly.
A plain white sauce made with water instead of milk, thickened with a roux and enriched with cold butter off the heat. The finishing butter is the whole point of the dish.
- Butter measureHalf a cup is 4 ounces, or one standard American stick. Four tablespoons go into the roux and the remaining four are beaten in at the end.
- The hingeThe recipe says only 'in small bits, beating constantly.' Working the last butter in gently, away from a boil, is what keeps it from separating into greasy butter over starch paste.
- Over hot waterThe instruction means a double boiler. It protects the sauce from scorching but makes it slow; a heavy saucepan over low heat works and is quicker, at the cost of needing steady attention.
- ConsistencyA pint of water to 4 tablespoons flour works out to 2 tablespoons of flour per cup, a medium-bodied sauce on the usual scale. Reducing the water to about 1 1/2 cups gives a thicker coating if that is wanted.
- Boiling waterThe recipe calls for the water boiling and added gradually with constant stirring; adding it a little at a time while stirring is what keeps the starch from lumping.
- SeasoningA quarter teaspoon of salt for a pint is restrained. Taste at the end, and consider lemon juice, chopped parsley, capers or a little of the fish's poaching liquid.
- Yield and servingSomething over two cups, enough for six to eight servings of poached or boiled fish. Serve at once; the finishing butter will separate if it is held or brought back up to heat.
Drawn butter was a standard English-American sauce for boiled fish through the nineteenth century; "drawn" is usually explained as an old kitchen sense of the word meaning melted or clarified, though the derivation is not settled. In its earliest form it was little more than melted butter thickened with a spoonful of flour and a little water, whisked in a pan set in hot water, and cookery writers of the period often complained that it was made badly, either oily or pasty. This version shows the sauce absorbed into the roux-and-liquid system taught in the American cooking schools of the 1880s and after, in which sauces were built on a measured proportion of fat to flour to liquid. Note that it uses water rather than milk, which keeps it in the older tradition and lets the flavor of the fish and its cooking liquor come through.