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Sauce

White Sauces

A creamy white sauce made with butter, flour, milk, cream, onion, carrot, turnip, mace, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot 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 Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and cook well.

  3. Add the sliced vegetables and seasoning, cooking for a few minutes without browning.

Simmer and finish

  1. Pour in the milk and bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer until needed.

  3. Strain the sauce and return it to the pot.

  4. Stir in the cream and reheat 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.

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat that coats the flour and carries flavor into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce once cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the flour without browning. Flour must cook in the butter long enough to lose its raw taste, but browning would darken the sauce and change its flavor. Adding the milk only after this stage lets the starch thicken evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, flour, onion, cream, pepper, carrot. 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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