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White Sauce

A simple béchamel sauce made with milk, butter, flour, white pepper, salt, and onion juice.

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

White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Cream the butter and flour together, then add them to the milk.

  3. Cook until the mixture has the consistency of cream.

  4. Add the salt, pepper, and onion juice.

  5. Cook for one minute longer before serving.

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.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and combines with flour to form a roux.

The step that matters

Cook the flour and butter before adding milk. Creaming the butter and flour together gives an even paste that blends smoothly into hot milk. Cooking the sauce until thickened, then a bit longer, lets starch swell fully so the sauce is smooth and not floury.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, butter, onion):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, butter, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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