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White Sauce

A creamy sauce made from milk, butter, flour, onion, celery, parsley, and optional egg and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the milk

  1. Boil the celery and parsley in the milk, adding white pepper and salt.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the sliced onion.

  2. Dredge in flour until it forms a paste, but do not let it brown.

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

  4. Boil the mixture while stirring until it thickens and becomes smooth.

  5. Pass it through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, let it cool slightly, then mix in the beaten egg gradually, warming it over low heat without boiling.

  2. Add a squeeze of lemon before serving, if desired.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness and fat to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked into the butter and milk.
Egg
Optional; enriches the sauce and adds body when gently warmed without boiling.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture while stirring until it thickens. Starch in the flour swells and thickens the sauce only when it reaches a boil. Stirring keeps the mixture smooth and prevents lumps from forming.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, onion, flour, celery, parsley, egg. 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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