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White Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, onion, celery, carrot, flour, stock, cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over low heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion, celery, and carrot; simmer gently for 10 minutes without browning.

  3. Stir in the flour until smooth and frothy.

  4. Cool slightly, then gradually add the stock, stirring until smooth.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, and boil for 5 minutes.

  6. Stir in the cream, let it boil once, and then strain.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the vegetables and forms the fat base that the flour thickens.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the roux thickens.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Add the stock gradually and stir until smooth. Adding cold or large amounts of liquid to the roux at once can trap flour in lumps. Adding it slowly while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, celery, carrot, flour, cream, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, celery, carrot, flour, cream, pepper. 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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