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Sauce

Bechamel Sauce

A creamy white sauce made from butter, flour, milk, nutmeg, salt, herbs, and optional mushroom liquor and peppers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Bechamel Sauce

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 ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir constantly for 5 minutes.

  3. Gradually pour in the boiling milk while whisking briskly.

  4. Add the grated nutmeg, salt, herbs, and mushroom liquor if available.

Finish and strain

  1. Cool the sauce for 15 to 20 minutes, then strain through a fine sieve.

  2. Optionally, add whole peppers to the sauce.

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

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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, giving it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cooked roux thickens into a creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Pouring the milk in gradually while whisking prevents lumps, because flour starch clumps if hot liquid meets it unevenly. Keep whisking so the starch disperses and the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, mushroom, 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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