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Bechamel or White Sauce

A creamy sauce made from veal, bacon or ham, butter, onion, mace, mushrooms, thyme, bay leaf, flour, broth, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,557 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Bechamel or White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Combine veal, bacon or ham, butter, onion, mace, mushrooms, thyme, and bay leaf in a stewpan.

  2. Fry over low heat without browning.

  3. Add flour to thicken.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour in broth and cream.

  2. Let it boil for 30 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Strain through a soup strainer before serving.

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. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

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

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Veal
Gives a meaty, savory flavor to the sauce as it cooks in the butter.
Bacon or ham
Adds smoky, salty depth that seasons the sauce from within.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness to the base.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, coating sauce.
Broth
Forms the main liquid that the flour thickens and the flavors are extracted into.
Cream
Adds fat and body, giving the sauce a rich, smooth texture.

The step that matters

Add the flour and keep stirring during the boil. Flour must be cooked briefly in the fat before liquid goes in, and constant stirring during the 30-minute boil prevents lumps and scorching on the pan base, keeping the sauce smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, butter, onion, mushroom, thyme, flour):

  1. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, butter, onion, mushroom, thyme, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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