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Simplified White Sauce

A stock-based white sauce made with butter, flour, stock, and milk, optionally with mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Simplified White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Melt ¼ pound of butter in a large stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Add the diced onions, carrot, turnip, cloves, mace, bay leaf, thyme, and parsley.

  3. Add ½ cup of water and stir occasionally until the bottom is covered with a whitish glaze.

  4. Fill the stewpan with 3 quarts of water and add 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt.

  5. Let it simmer for 1.5 hours, skimming regularly, then strain through a fine sieve into a basin.

Make the sauce

  1. In another stewpan, melt ¼ pound of butter and mix in 6 ounces of flour, stirring for 3 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool slightly, then add the strained stock all at once, stirring continuously.

  3. Bring to a boil and cook for 15 minutes, then stir in ½ pint of boiling milk.

  4. If desired, add chopped mushrooms and strain again into a basin, stirring occasionally until cool.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the flavour of the aromatics and, with flour, forms the roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the sauce when cooked in butter and then combined with the liquid.
Milk
Adds richness and body to the finished white sauce.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury aroma to the stock as they cook gently in butter.

The step that matters

Adding the stock to the roux. Adding the stock all at once while stirring continuously keeps the flour smooth and prevents lumps, so the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, carrot, turnip, clove, thyme, parsley):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, carrot, turnip, clove, thyme, parsley. 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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