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Bechamel Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, stock, milk, onion, salt, and pepper, optionally enriched with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Bechamel Sauce

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 ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Slice the onion and heat it in a double boiler with the milk.

  2. In a separate pan, cook the butter and flour together.

  3. Add the stock to the butter and flour mixture, stirring until it thickens.

  4. Remove the onion from the milk and add the milk to the thickened mixture.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

Enrich and serve

  1. For a richer sauce, beat the yolks of two eggs and pour the hot sauce into them just 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Fat that carries flavour and, cooked with flour, forms the base for thickening.
Flour
Starch that thickens the liquid into a smooth, stable sauce when cooked with butter.
White stock
Savoury liquid that gives the sauce its body and background flavour.
Rich milk or cream
Liquid that adds creaminess, softness and richness to the finished sauce.
Onion
Infuses the milk with a mild, sweet aromatic flavour, then is removed.

The step that matters

Pour the hot sauce into the egg yolks. Yolks thicken and can scramble if heated too fast. Add the hot sauce gradually while whisking, and avoid boiling once the yolks are in.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper. 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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