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Béchamel Maigre

A light béchamel sauce made with butter, carrot, onion, mushrooms, flour, milk, salt, cayenne, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Béchamel Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Melt the butter over low heat in a thick saucepan.

  2. Add the sliced carrot, onions, and mushroom buttons.

  3. Cook slowly for 30 minutes until the butter is nearly evaporated.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir in the flour.

  2. Gradually add the milk, shaking the pan to keep the sauce smooth.

  3. Gently boil the sauce for 30 minutes.

  4. Season with salt and cayenne.

  5. Strain the sauce.

  6. Reduce it if not thick enough.

Finish with egg yolks

  1. Mix in the boiling sauce with the egg yolks.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Carrot + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,796 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the vegetables' flavour and adds richness to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot milk and butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Onions
Add savoury aroma and depth as they cook slowly in the butter.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as their proteins set gently with heat.

The step that matters

Mixing the boiling sauce into the egg yolks. Egg proteins set when heated, so the yolks can scramble if they meet very hot sauce too quickly. Adding the hot sauce gradually while stirring keeps the yolks smooth and lets them thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, mushroom, flour, milk, pepper, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, mushroom, flour, milk, pepper, 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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