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Bechamel Sauce

A sauce made with white stock, butter, flour, mushrooms, cream, lemon juice, and optional gelatine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Clarke, Mary Lamson. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Bechamel Sauce

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cook the butter and flour well together with salt and pepper if the stock is not already well seasoned.

  2. Add the stock as in plain white sauce, then the mushrooms, washed, peeled and cut small; let the sauce simmer twenty minutes with the lid half on.

  3. Skim off the butter as it rises.

  4. Strain through a fine sieve pressing hard; add the cream and lemon juice and let boil about three minutes.

  5. Pour out and stir often while cooling.

  6. If this is to be used to mask a chaud-froid it will need one tablespoonful gelatine.

Make the cheese topping and serve

  1. Prepare six slices of toast, removing the crusts.

  2. Cut one pound of soft cheese in small bits and put them in a chafing-dish.

  3. Add one-half glass of ale or butter, one-half saltspoonful red pepper, and stir with a silver spoon until the whole mass is well melted.

  4. Serve the preparation on the toast which should already be on the plates.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

762Calories
24 gProtein
28 gFat
105 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Cheese1 oz (28g) cheddar113
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Mushroom1/2 cup sliced (35g)15
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Chili1 tsp (2.7g)8
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Clarke, Mary Lamson. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 flavour when cooked with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter into a roux.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that the roux thickens into sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the finished sauce.
Soft cheese
Melts into the mixture to give a rich, stringy, savoury body.
Gelatine
Sets the sauce so it can coat and hold a chaud-froid mask.

The step that matters

Straining and stirring while the sauce cools. Pressing through a fine sieve removes lumps and solids for a smooth sauce, and frequent stirring as it cools prevents a skin from forming and keeps the texture even.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, cheese, pepper, flour, mushroom):

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, cheese, pepper, flour, 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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