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 ↓
White Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sauce
Melt the butter in a hot saucepan until bubbling.
Stir in the flour and cook until smooth.
Gradually add the hot milk, stirring continuously.
Season with salt and remove from heat.
Finish and serve
Stir in the beaten egg just before serving.
For macaroni, add Parmesan cheese.
For fish or boiled fowl, add chopped hard-boiled eggs or oysters and stew for 5 minutes.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,163 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,608 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
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 sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
- Flour
- Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells with heat.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into the sauce.
- Egg
- Adds richness and body to the finished sauce when stirred in off the heat.
The step that matters
Stir in the beaten egg just before serving. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding it to a hot sauce and boiling it can curdle or scramble it. Stirring it in at the end, off the heat, keeps the sauce smooth.
“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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