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Sauce

Bechamel Cream

A creamy sauce made with clarified butter, flour, parsley, peppercorns, mushrooms, white stock, and thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Bechamel Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the clarified butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add parsley, peppercorns, mushrooms, and white stock.

  4. Bring to a boil while stirring.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the thick cream.

  6. Simmer for 20 minutes.

  7. Strain into a basin for use.

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.

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

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

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

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

  3. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Clarified butter
Carries the flour and forms the roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter and stock.
White stock
Forms the main liquid body of the sauce.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour until smooth. Flour must be fully mixed into the melted butter so no lumps form, and the roux should be cooked enough to lose its raw taste before liquid is added.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mushroom, 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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