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Bechamel Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, spices, vegetables, stock or water, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Bechamel Sauce

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour, nutmeg, peppercorns, and salt; mix well.

  3. Incorporate the onion, carrot, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, and mushrooms.

  4. Pour in the stock or water and sweet cream; stir to combine.

  5. Cook slowly for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

  6. Strain the sauce through a sieve 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.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the fat base that the flour cooks into, carrying flavour and richness through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as its starch swells during cooking.
Stock or water
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, which the flour thickens.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and body, giving the sauce a richer, smoother texture.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stirring prevents the flour and milk solids from sticking and scorching on the base of the pan, which would give a burnt taste. Gentle heat lets the starch thicken the sauce evenly without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, nutmeg, carrot, parsley, thyme, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, nutmeg, carrot, parsley, thyme, mushroom. 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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