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Bechamel Sauce

A creamy mushroom sauce made from butter, flour, stock, mushrooms, cream, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Bechamel Sauce

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the butter and flour until well mixed.

  2. Add the stock and stir until it boils.

  3. Add the washed and peeled mushrooms, then let the sauce boil again.

  4. Simmer for 20 minutes with the lid half on, skimming off any butter that rises.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the sauce through a cloth into another saucepan.

  2. Stir in the cream and lemon juice, then boil for 3 to 5 minutes.

  3. Pour into a basin and stir while it cools.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 with fat and adds a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce by swelling with heat.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the stock as it boils. Flour clumps if it is not fully mixed with the fat and liquid. Stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly rather than lumping.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mushroom, cream. 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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