This is a most important sauce, but rarely made properly by English cooks, who, as a rule, make it too thick with flour, and also generally make quite ten times the quantity really required. Good butter sauce, or melted butter, is made as follows: - Take a quarter of a pound of butter, and cut it into half a dozen pieces the same size. Take one of these pieces and place it in a small saucepan with about the same quantity of flour. Dissolve the butter, and mix the flour with it. Now add half a tumbler of water, or stock, or fish stock, and stir it up, and bring it gently to a boil. This will cause it to become about as thick as cream. Add a "suspicion" of nutmeg, and then gradually add and melt in the remains of the quarter of a pound of butter; do not let it boil, and add the butter the last thing. It is apt to curdle, or rather decompose. A little cold water will often restore it. This really delicious sauce is adapted for all kinds of fish, both boiled and fried. It is somewhat expensive, and should be made in small quantities, as, if properly made it is very rich, and a little will go a long way.