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Good White Sauce

A creamy sauce made with milk, butter, flour, eggs, onion, celery, parsley, white pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Good White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Dredge in the flour slowly until mixed.

Flavour the milk

  1. In a separate vessel, cook the milk, onion, celery, parsley, white pepper, and salt together in a bain marie.

Finish the sauce

  1. Slowly stir the cooked milk mixture into the butter and flour.

  2. Add the beaten eggs while stirring constantly.

  3. Let the sauce come to a boil, stirring all the while until it simmers.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  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
Forms the fat base of the roux, carrying flavour and giving the sauce richness.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that thickens as it heats.
Eggs
Enrich the sauce and help thicken it as the proteins set with heat.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. Egg proteins set with heat and can curdle or turn grainy if the sauce is too hot or stirred too little. Add them while stirring constantly to keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, onion, celery, parsley, butter, 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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