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Cheese Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, milk, spices, and grated cheese, served over macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cheese Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir to form a smooth paste.

  3. Gradually add the milk while beating constantly.

  4. Add the salt, pepper, cayenne, and cheese.

  5. Continue stirring until the cheese is melted.

Serve

  1. Pour over macaroni and serve on a hot platter.

  2. Alternatively, transfer to a buttered baking dish, cover with crumbs, and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the crumbs are browned.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, with fat coating the particles for a smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce by gelatinising its starch as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as the flour starch swells.
Cheese
Provides the main flavour and, once melted, makes the sauce rich and creamy.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk while beating constantly. Adding liquid slowly while stirring spreads the flour particles evenly so lumps do not form. Starch thickens as it heats, so a smooth roux-and-milk base is needed before the cheese goes in.

“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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