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Sauce

Bechamel Sauce

A white sauce made from a clear stock of fowl, veal, ham, and vegetables thickened with arrowroot and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Bechamel Sauce

Why it works: Carrot and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the fowl, veal knuckles, ham, carrots, onions, mace, white peppercorns, coarse sea salt, and butter in 4 to 5 quarts of water to prepare a white stock.

  2. Cut up the fowl and veal, then simmer them with the ham in a small amount of water until juices are extracted.

  3. Add the full quantity of water to the other ingredients and let the mixture simmer for 4 to 5 hours.

  4. Skim and strain the liquid until it is clear for the bechamel.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the arrowroot with the cream and let it simmer in a clean pan for 4 to 5 minutes.

  2. Heat 1 pint of the stock and pour it into the cream mixture.

  3. Simmer the mixture slowly for 10 minutes or until it thickens; add more stock if it becomes too thick.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Carrot + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Veal knuckles
Release gelatin and body into the stock, giving the sauce depth.
Fowl
Adds savory flavor and body to the stock.

The step that matters

Simmering the cream with arrowroot. Arrowroot thickens only when heated and then held near a simmer; if it is boiled hard or left too long it can thin out again, and if stock is added too fast the sauce can go lumpy or too thin. Adding stock gradually lets the starch set evenly.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, carrot, onion, mace, butter, cream):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, carrot, onion, mace, butter, cream. 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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