Skip to main content
Main

White Sauce

A white sauce made with butter, flour, stock, and meat trimmings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,097 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Gradually mix in the flour with a wooden spoon until smooth.

  3. Slowly add the cold stock, stirring continuously until the mixture is a pale, sherry-colored paste.

  4. Set aside to cool.

Make the stock

  1. In another saucepan, combine the uncooked trimmings, water or stock, ham, veal cutlet, and optional fowl or rabbit legs.

  2. Add the chopped carrot, parsnip, onions, celery, turnip, mushrooms, shallot, bay leaf, thyme, and parsley.

  3. Optionally, brown the mixture in butter for added flavor.

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. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Flour + parsniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsnip + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,054 recipes

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

  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
Carries flavor and richness, and forms the fat base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Veal cutlet
Adds meaty savoriness to the stock that flavors the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cold stock to the roux. Cold liquid added slowly while stirring constantly lets the flour starch disperse evenly before it swells. Adding it all at once or too fast creates lumps that are hard to smooth out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, veal, ham, rabbit, carrot, parsnip):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, veal, ham, rabbit, carrot, parsnip. 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.

More white sauce recipes

English 22Turnips in 20Fish in 17for Poultry 12Cauliflower in 11Lemon 9 See all 309 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipes