Skip to main content
Main

To Make Bechamel, or White Sauce

A creamy sauce made by simmering veal and ham with aromatics, then thickening with flour and finishing with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Make Bechamel, or White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, combine veal, ham, peppercorns, shallot, cloves, mace, bay leaf, parsley, and veal broth or water.

  2. Bring to a boil and let it simmer until strong and well-flavored.

Finish the sauce

  1. Strain the mixture and thicken the liquid with flour mixed in cold water.

  2. Bring it back to a boil and slowly mix in the cream.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Releases savoury flavour and body into the broth as it simmers.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid into a smooth, sauce-like body.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding flour to the liquid. Flour mixed in cold water is stirred in so it disperses evenly; added dry or to hot liquid it clumps. Starch needs to be brought to a boil to fully thicken the sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, shallot, clove, parsley, flour, cream):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, shallot, clove, parsley, flour, cream. 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

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes