Why it works: Butter and milk 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, Etc
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sauce
Heat a portion of the milk, reserving enough cold milk to mix with the flour until thin enough to pour.
Combine equal parts of flour and reserved cold milk, stirring until smooth.
Slowly pour the flour mixture into the scalded milk, stirring constantly until thickened.
Boil for 1 minute while stirring, then cook for 10 minutes in a double boiler.
Add butter, salt, and pepper; stir well and serve.
Store
If not used immediately, cover closely to prevent a film from forming.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Flour
- Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks and gelatinizes.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a pourable sauce.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
The step that matters
Pour the flour mixture slowly while stirring constantly. Adding the thickener slowly into hot liquid while stirring keeps it dispersed. Dumped in at once, flour clumps into lumps that cannot be smoothed out.
“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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