Skip to main content
Main

Cream Bechamel Sauce

A sauce made from butter, flour, milk, aromatics, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cream Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux and base

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter and flour with a wooden spoon until combined.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the mixture with the chopped onion, carrot, celery, parsley, bay leaf, thyme, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and milk. Stir over medium heat until it boils.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain into a basin.

  2. Heat some of the sauce in a saucepan with sliced mushrooms. Stir in cream equal to half the amount of the sauce while on the heat.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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, while melting with flour to form the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated in the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce as it comes to the boil. Flour settles and scorches on the bottom of the pan if not stirred, and lumps form if the starch is not dispersed evenly. Constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth as it thickens.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, carrot, celery, parsley, thyme, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, carrot, celery, parsley, thyme, 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipes