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Sauce

Bechamel Sauce

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, butter, flour, and milk, seasoned with cayenne pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Bechamel Sauce

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat the yolks of the eggs, flour, and 2 tablespoons of butter to a cream.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the milk with the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter, cayenne, and salt until boiling.

  3. Pour the boiling milk over the egg mixture, stirring constantly.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook for 2 minutes, stirring continuously.

Finish and serve

  1. Adjust seasoning if desired. Serve with chicken, sweetbreads, or other white meats.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness through their proteins and fat.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, stable sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook while stirring. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating or leaving them still can scramble them into lumps. Constant stirring keeps the heat even so the sauce becomes smooth and thick.

“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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