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Bechamel Sauce

A creamy sauce made from stock, butter, flour, and optional cream and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Bechamel Sauce

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a saucepan, combine the white stock or milk and stock.

  2. In another pan, fry the onion, carrot, and turnip in butter until softened.

  3. Add flour to the stock mixture and stir well.

Finish the sauce

  1. For a richer sauce, add a little cream and chopped mushrooms.

  2. Combine the fried vegetables with the sauce and cook until thickened.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the flavour of the softened vegetables.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with fat and stock.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that the thickened roux turns into sauce.
Milk
Adds body and a mild sweetness to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the stock. Flour lumps form if it is not fully mixed in while the liquid is smooth. Stirring well and cooking until thickened gives an even, glossy sauce as the starch swells.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, onion, turnip, butter, flour, cream, 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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