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Bechamel Sauce

A creamy white sauce made from cream or milk, Velouté, butter, flour, egg yolks, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Bechamel Sauce

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the cream or milk in a saucepan until it simmers.

  2. Add the Veloute sauce as needed.

  3. Stir until well mixed and thick like plain cream.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine cloth to serve.

Make the roux and finish

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

  2. Whisk in the flour.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Add the salt, pepper, nutmeg, water, and lemon juice.

  5. Stir continuously until the sauce thickens.

  6. Add small pieces of cold butter before serving for a smooth finish.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the sauce its body and richness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling with heat as it cooks with the butter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and further thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat.
Veloute sauce
Adds a savoury stock-based flavour and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Adding them gently and stirring continuously keeps them smooth while they thicken the sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sauce, butter, flour, egg, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sauce, butter, flour, egg, pepper, nutmeg. 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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