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Sauce

Bechamel Sauce Maigre

A light béchamel sauce made with onions, butter, flour, milk, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Bechamel Sauce Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the onions in half and place them in a saucepan with the butter.

  2. Cook the onions until they are still white.

  3. Add the flour and stir for a few minutes.

  4. Pour in the milk, then add nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  5. Allow the mixture to simmer for 30 minutes.

  6. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve and set aside for use.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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
Melts to form the fat base that the flour cooks in.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with fat.
Milk
Forms the liquid that the flour thickens into the sauce.
Onions
Flavour the butter and milk as they cook gently.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the roux. Pouring in the milk too fast or while the roux is very hot can cause lumps, because the starch clumps before it disperses. Add the liquid gradually and stir to keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, nutmeg, pepper. 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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