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Sauce

Mornay Sauce

A cheese sauce made with béchamel, fish fumet, Gruyère, Parmesan, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Gruyere cheese and parmesan cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 152 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Mornay Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the Bechamel Sauce with the fish fumet.

  2. Reduce the mixture by a quarter.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add the Gruyère and Parmesan cheese.

  2. Stir with a small whisk over heat until the cheese melts.

  3. Remove from heat and slowly add the butter.

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. Gruyere cheese + parmesan cheesetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Gruyere cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Bechamel sauce
Forms the thickened base that gives the sauce its body and coating texture.
Gruyere cheese
Melts smoothly and contributes a rich, nutty flavour and stretchy texture.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty depth and helps the sauce hold its flavour when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy, silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the butter off the heat. Butter added slowly to a sauce that is off the heat emulsifies into a smooth, glossy finish. If the sauce is too hot, the butter can separate, leaving the sauce greasy and broken.

“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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