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BiChamel Maigre

A lean white 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 ↓

BiChamel Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

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

  2. Add the sliced carrot, onions, and mushrooms.

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

Make the sauce

  1. Stir in the flour.

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

  3. Boil gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Add salt and cayenne to taste.

Finish

  1. Strain the sauce.

  2. If not thick enough, reduce it further or mix it with the boiling 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 flavour and gives the sauce richness while cooking the vegetables.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sauce when gently heated.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they cook slowly in the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually. Pouring the milk in slowly while shaking the pan keeps the flour dispersed, so its starch swells evenly. Flour added all at once clumps, and lumps cannot be fully smoothed out once the sauce has thickened.

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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