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Sauce

Bhechamel, or White Sauce

A sauce made by simmering veal and ham with spices, then thickening with arrowroot and adding cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bhechamel, or White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

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

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

  3. Strain the mixture.

Thicken and finish

  1. Thicken the broth with arrowroot mixed with some of the gravy.

  2. Bring it to a boil again.

  3. 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 + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + arrowroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Contributes meaty flavor and body to the broth as it simmers.
Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.
Lean ham
Adds savory, salty depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the cream. Cream added slowly to a hot liquid, rather than all at once, is less likely to curdle or separate, keeping the sauce smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the peach

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

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Limebetter flavor fit
  3. Cherrybetter flavor fit
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, shallot, clove, mace, parsley, arrowroot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

More béchamel sauce recipes

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