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Bechamel Sauce

A creamy mushroom sauce made from white stock, butter, flour, mushrooms, cream, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Bechamel Sauce

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the butter and flour until well combined.

  2. Add the stock and stir until it boils.

  3. Add the washed and peeled mushrooms, then let the sauce boil again.

  4. Simmer for 20 minutes with the lid half on, skimming off any butter that rises.

  5. Strain the sauce through a cloth into another saucepan.

Finish and cool

  1. Stir in the cream and lemon juice, then boil for 3 to 5 minutes.

  2. Pour into a basin and stir while it cools.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

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

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
Fat that combines with flour to form a roux, giving the sauce body and a rich flavour.
Flour
Starch that thickens the stock into a smooth, coating sauce when cooked with the butter.
White stock
Liquid base that hydrates the flour and makes up most of the sauce's volume and savoury flavour.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the finished sauce a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy savoury flavour to the stock as the sauce simmers.

The step that matters

Cooking the roux and simmering the sauce. Flour must be fully mixed into the butter and the stock brought to a boil, then simmered, so starch swells and thickens evenly. Undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste, and boiling too hard or unskimmed butter can make the sauce greasy or lumpy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, mushroom, cream):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mushroom, 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.

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