Skip to main content
Main

Bechamel Sauce

A thickened sauce made with veal, ham, mushrooms, onion, cloves, mace, thyme, marjoram, butter, stock, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Bechamel Sauce

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, combine veal, ham, mushrooms, onion, cloves, mace, thyme, marjoram, and butter.

  2. Add white stock or gravy and simmer gently for 1½ hours.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix some of the gravy with flour until smooth, then add rich cream.

  2. Stir this mixture into the sauce and boil for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Strain the sauce and season with 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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Provides the main meat body and savory flavor of the sauce.
Lean ham
Adds salty, savory depth that flavors the stock and sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy and cream into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Rich cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and cream mixture into the sauce. Flour must be smoothed fully into the gravy first, or it forms lumps. Constant stirring while boiling for 15 minutes keeps the sauce smooth, thickens it evenly, and prevents the cream from scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, mushroom, onion, clove, thyme, marjoram):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, mushroom, onion, clove, thyme, marjoram. 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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes