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Sauce Mornay

A creamy cheese sauce made with butter, flour, milk, cream, cheese, and butter.

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 ↓

Sauce Mornay

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt butter over low heat, stir in flour to make a roux, and cook for a few minutes without coloring.

  2. Remove from heat and let it cook on low for 15 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Gradually add hot milk while stirring continuously until the mixture boils.

  2. Set the sauce aside and stir in heavy cream.

  3. Return the sauce to low heat, beating it smooth while warming.

  4. Off the heat, finish with fresh butter, salt, and grated cheese.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Enriches the roux with fat and adds a rich, buttery flavor to the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Forms a roux with the butter, which thickens the milk into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the roux thickens into a pourable sauce.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and melts into the sauce to give it body and sheen.

The step that matters

Add the hot milk gradually while stirring continuously. Starch from the roux needs to disperse evenly in the liquid. Adding milk slowly while stirring prevents lumps and gives a smooth, evenly thickened sauce.

“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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