Name: Bechamel Sauce
Ingredients: 2 cloves; a little grated nutmeg; butter; 1 quart milk; a little salt; a little sugar; butter (for roux); flour; veal and chicken blonde

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Chop all soup vegetables, then sauté them in butter without browning.
In a separate pot, boil 1 quart of milk with a little salt and sugar.
Add the sautéed vegetables to the boiling milk, cover, and set aside to cool.
Make a roux by cooking butter and flour slowly until white, without burning.
Gradually add the veal and chicken blonde to the roux.
Skim off any fat and strain the mixture through a fine strainer.
Set aside to cool, stirring frequently to keep it smooth.

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.

Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Veal + chickentop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,243 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, butter, milk, sugar, flour, veal, chicken):

Cinnamonfits better
Cardamomfits better
Marjoramfits about as well
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, butter, milk, sugar, flour, veal, chicken. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.