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Sauce

Bechamel Sauce

A creamy sauce made from stock, cream, egg yolk, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Bechamel Sauce

Why it works: Cream and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine stock and cream over medium heat.

  2. Once heated, remove from the fire.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolk, salt, and pepper.

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. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce and adds richness as it sets gently with the warm liquid.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, giving the sauce body and a silky mouthfeel.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by gently setting in warm liquid. If the mixture is too hot when the yolk goes in, it can scramble into lumps, so removing the pan from the heat first matters.

“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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