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Sauce

White Sauce

A simple sauce made by whisking butter, flour, and milk together and simmering.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 base

  1. Mix cold butter with flour in a bowl.

  2. Add the mixture to cold milk.

  3. Heat in a double boiler for 20 to 25 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a pan and blend in flour.

  2. Add heated milk slowly and stir constantly.

Finish in the double boiler

  1. Return to double boiler for 20 to 25 minutes.

  2. Stir flour into a small portion of cold milk to make a paste.

  3. Add the paste to hot milk in the double boiler.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, which thickens as its starch swells with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth texture and rich flavour, and coats the flour so it blends evenly.
Flour
Its starch thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.

The step that matters

Add the paste to hot milk in the double boiler. Flour lumps when it meets hot liquid without being dispersed first. Mixing it into a small portion of cold milk spreads the starch granules, so they thicken the sauce smoothly once added. Keep stirring as it heats.

“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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