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Bechamel Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, milk, vegetables, mace, cloves, peppercorns, salt, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Bechamel Sauce

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the milk

  1. Cut the vegetables into rough pieces.

  2. In a pan, combine the milk, mace, peppercorns, and cloves with the vegetables.

  3. Infuse in a warm place for at least 30 minutes, then strain.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, add the flour, and cook without browning.

  2. Gradually add the seasoned milk and bring to a boil.

  3. Pass through a fine cloth, reheat, and stir in the cream.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

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

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux, adding richness and smooth body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk with the butter, giving the sauce its structure and body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as the starch swells.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the roux without browning. Cooking the butter and flour gently cooks out the raw flour taste and lets the starch thicken smoothly. Browning changes the flavour and colour, and adding milk too quickly can cause lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, carrot, celery, onion, clove):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, carrot, celery, onion, clove. 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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