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Sauce

Bechamel Sauce

A sauce made with diced ham, veal, butter, onions, parsley, cloves, optional mushrooms, flour, and milk, simmered and strained.

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

Why it works: Parsley and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a 2-quart saucepan, combine the diced ham and veal with butter, onions, parsley, cloves, and mushrooms if using.

  2. Place the saucepan over low heat and stir with a wooden spoon to prevent browning.

  3. Add the flour and mix well into the sauce.

Make the sauce

  1. Gradually moisten with milk while stirring continuously to avoid sticking.

  2. Bring to a boil over medium heat and cook for 1 hour, adding more milk if it thickens too much.

  3. Strain through a fine sieve 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. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Clove + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and gives a rich, smooth flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that becomes the sauce as it reduces and thickens.
Veal
Contributes meaty flavour and body to the sauce as it cooks.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the heat low and stir while adding milk. Flour-thickened sauces scorch and lump if the heat is too high or the milk is added without constant stirring. Low heat and steady stirring keep the roux-style base smooth and prevent browning on the pan bottom.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, butter, onion, parsley, mushroom, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, butter, onion, parsley, mushroom, flour. 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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