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White Bechanel Sauce

A creamy white sauce made from stock, herbs, and cream, thickened with arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

White Bechanel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock base

  1. Combine stock, onion, mushrooms, thyme, parsley, mace, and salt in a stew-pan.

  2. Boil until the stock is reduced by half and has absorbed the flavors of the herbs, then strain.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add the cream to a clean stew-pan.

  2. If using thin cream, mix the arrowroot smoothly into it and let simmer for five minutes before adding to the stock.

  3. Gradually mix in the reduced stock while stirring continuously over low heat until thickened.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + arrowroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + arrowroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

White stock
Forms the flavoured liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Thick or double cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce its smooth, silky texture.
Arrowroot
Thickens the cream when it is thin, giving the sauce body without lumps.

The step that matters

Adding the reduced stock gradually while stirring over low heat. Adding the stock too quickly or over high heat can cause lumps or curdling. Gentle heat and constant stirring let the starch and cream thicken evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the arrowroot

The recipe marks arrowroot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, mushroom, thyme, parsley, mace, cream):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, mushroom, thyme, parsley, mace, cream. 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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