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Thick Bechamel Sauce for Souffli Potatoes

A thick béchamel sauce flavored with mace, onion, and cayenne pepper, used for soufflé potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Thick Bechamel Sauce for Souffli Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, boil the milk with mace, onion, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Melt the butter in another saucepan and mix it with the flour.

  3. Strain the milk and gradually add it to the flour and butter mixture.

  4. Stir until it boils, then add a pinch of salt and use.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats with the roux.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the sauce while forming the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid once it is cooked with the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the roux. Adding the warm milk gradually and stirring constantly keeps the flour and butter blended smoothly. Adding it all at once can trap lumps of starch, which then do not dissolve evenly as the sauce heats and thickens.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, onion, pepper, butter, flour. 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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