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White Sauce

A creamy sauce made from butter, milk, flour, egg yolks, onion, 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: 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 ↓

White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Add the hot milk, salt, cayenne pepper, and onion heart.

Thicken

  1. In a separate bowl, rub the flour with a little milk until smooth.

  2. Slowly pour the flour mixture into the milk while stirring constantly.

  3. Let the sauce boil, stirring continuously, then reduce the heat.

Finish

  1. Crumble the yolks of the hard boiled eggs and beat them into the sauce.

  2. Just before serving, let the sauce boil once more while stirring.

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

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 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. Milk + flourtop 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Flour
Its starch swells when heated with liquid, thickening the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, smooth texture and flavour.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and add body and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the hot milk. Starch granules swell and clump if they meet hot liquid unevenly. Pouring slowly while stirring constantly disperses them, keeping the sauce smooth and stopping it from scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

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

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