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White Sauce

A creamy mushroom sauce made with white stock, butter, flour, mushrooms, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt 2 ounces of butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in 1½ ounces of flour with a wooden spoon until combined.

  3. Add 1 pint of white stock.

  4. Stir until the stock boils.

Simmer and strain

  1. Wash and peel 6 mushrooms.

  2. Add the mushrooms to the sauce.

  3. Allow the sauce to boil again.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes with the lid half on.

  5. Skim off any butter that rises to the surface with a spoon.

  6. Strain the sauce through a fine cloth into another saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the strained sauce.

  2. Stir until it boils.

  3. Add ½ pint of cream.

  4. Pour the sauce into a bowl.

  5. Stir while it cools.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

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

  5. Flour + mushroomtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 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

Butter
Melts with flour to form the roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the stock into a smooth sauce.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it boils.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour to the sauce as they simmer in it.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the melted butter. Cooking the flour in the butter lets its starch swell evenly when liquid is added, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

“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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