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Sauce

Foundation White Sauce

A simple white sauce made with butter or margarine, flour, and milk or stock, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Foundation White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and cook for a few minutes without browning.

Finish the sauce

  1. Gradually add the liquid while beating well.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Stir until it reaches boiling point.

  4. Cook for five minutes and then 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 or margarine
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Its starch thickens the liquid into a smooth, binding sauce as it heats.
Liquid (milk, water or stock)
Forms the body of the sauce, which the flour thickens as it boils.

The step that matters

Gradually add the liquid while beating well. Flour starch clumps when liquid is poured in all at once. Adding the liquid slowly while beating disperses the starch evenly, so the sauce thickens smooth instead of lumpy.

“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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