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White Sauce

A creamy white sauce made with butter, flour, stock, and meat trimmings simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,097 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the roux

  1. Melt ¼ pound of butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Gradually mix in 5 tablespoons of flour with a wooden spoon.

  3. Slowly moisten with 1 teacup of cold clear stock, stirring until it forms a pale, sherry-colored paste.

  4. Set aside to cool.

Make the stock

  1. In another saucepan, combine uncooked trimmings of veal or poultry with 2 quarts of cold water or white stock.

  2. Add ¼ pound of lean uncooked ham, 1 pound of veal cutlet, and pieces of fowl or rabbit if available.

  3. Include 1 small carrot, 1 parsnip, 3 button onions, ½ head of white celery, 1 small turnip, 3 button mushrooms, and ½ shallot, all chopped.

  4. Add 1 bay leaf, 1 sprig of thyme, and 1 sprig of green parsley.

  5. Simmer with a lid for 2 hours.

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. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + parsniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsnip + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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

Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux, carrying flavor and keeping the flour smooth.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when mixed with fat and liquid.
Veal cutlet
Adds meat flavor and body to the simmered stock.
Lean uncooked ham
Contributes savory, salty meat flavor to the stock.

The step that matters

Slowly moisten the roux with cold stock. Adding cold liquid gradually to the hot roux lets the starch disperse evenly, preventing lumps. Pouring it in all at once makes lumps that are hard to smooth out later.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, veal, ham, rabbit, carrot, parsnip):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, veal, ham, rabbit, carrot, parsnip. 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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