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White Sauce, Made Without Meat

A creamy sauce made with butter, onions, carrot, flour, milk, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

White Sauce, Made Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the chopped onions and carrot; simmer until the butter is nearly absorbed.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir in the flour and gradually add the milk.

  2. Boil gently until the sauce thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce, season with salt and cayenne, and serve.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

Butter
Carries flavor and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.
Onions
Add aroma and gentle sweetness as they soften in the butter.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the sauce thickens. Flour starch only thickens fully when heated long enough to swell. Stopping early leaves lumps or a raw, floury taste, while overheating can scorch the milk. Stir steadily while it cooks.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, 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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