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Bechamel Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, spices, vegetables, stock, and sweet cream, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Bechamel Sauce

Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour, nutmeg, peppercorns, and salt; mix well.

  3. Incorporate the onion, carrot, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, and mushrooms.

  4. Pour in the stock or water and sweet cream; stir to combine.

  5. Cook slowly for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

Finish

  1. Strain the sauce through a sieve before serving.

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.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat for the roux and rich flavour in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy texture.
Stock or water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Flour must cook long enough to lose its raw taste and thicken fully, and stirring keeps it from scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, nutmeg, carrot, parsley, thyme, mushroom):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, nutmeg, carrot, parsley, thyme, mushroom. 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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