Skip to main content
Main

Bechamel Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, stock, cream, egg yolks, and aromatics, finished with lemon juice and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Bechamel Sauce

Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavouring

  1. Tie the peppercorns, mace, bay leaf, onion, parsley, thyme, and carrot in a cloth to make a little bag.

  2. Cook the bag in the white stock for 30 minutes.

  3. Heat the cream in a separate pot.

Make the roux and base

  1. In another pan, cook the flour and butter until frothy.

  2. Add the stock to the flour and butter mixture, removing the bag.

  3. Stir in the heated cream.

Thicken and finish

  1. Pour the mixture onto the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Return to the heat and cook over hot water until thickened like custard, being careful not to curdle.

  3. Remove from heat and add the lemon juice and nutmeg, adjusting salt and pepper to taste.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the sauce's savoury flavour.
Cream
Adds body and a silky texture to the finished sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and further thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, so the sauce can curdle if it gets too hot. Adding the hot mixture slowly and cooking gently over hot water keeps it smooth and custard-like.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, nutmeg, cream, egg, lemon, mace):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, nutmeg, cream, egg, lemon, mace. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes