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Sauce

White Sauce

A creamy sauce made from milk, butter, cream, and aromatics simmered together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. In a pot, combine 1 pint of milk, chopped mushrooms, onion, carrot, sweet herbs, whole pepper, coarse sea salt, cloves, and mace.

  2. Simmer gently for about 1 hour.

Finish the sauce

  1. In a separate saucepan, melt 1 oz. of butter over medium heat until it thickens.

  2. Stir in ½ cup of cream to 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.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  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

Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce and carries the flavors of the aromatics.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Onion
Releases sweetness and savory depth into the milk during gentle simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for about 1 hour. Milk scorches and can boil over at high heat, and it can pick up a burnt taste on the bottom of the pot. A gentle simmer lets the aromatics slowly flavor the milk while it stays smooth and unburnt.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, mushroom, onion, carrot, pepper, clove, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, mushroom, onion, carrot, pepper, clove, butter. 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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