Name: White Sauce, or Drawn Butter, for Vegetables
Ingredients: 1 cup hot milk; 1 cup vegetable stock (water in which vegetables have been cooked); 2 tablespoons butter; 1½ tablespoons flour; salt to taste; pepper to taste

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, or Drawn Butter, for Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce

Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Add the flour, salt, and pepper, stirring to combine.
Gradually add the hot milk and vegetable stock, stirring continuously.
Cook for 5 minutes until thickened.

Serve

Pour the sauce over the vegetables to be served.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Butter: Adds fat and richness, and carries flavor through the sauce.
Flour: Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Hot milk: Forms the creamy body of the sauce.
Vegetable stock: Adds liquid and savory vegetable flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the liquid gradually while stirring. Flour clumps when hot liquid hits it all at once. Adding the milk and stock slowly while stirring keeps the starch evenly dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

“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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White Sauce, or Drawn Butter, for Vegetables