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Bechamel Sauce

A creamy white sauce made from a roux of butter and flour, stock, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Bechamel Sauce

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infused stock

  1. Simmer the onion, carrot, bay leaf, parsley, pepperberries, and white stock for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture to obtain ½ cup of stock.

  3. Add the milk to the strained stock.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and whisk in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add the milk mixture to the roux, stirring constantly until thickened.

  3. Season with salt, cayenne, and black pepper.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour while forming the base roux with flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in the hot liquid once cooked into the butter roux.
Milk
Forms the body of the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture as it thickens.
White stock
Provides savoury liquid, infused with aromatics, that becomes part of the sauce base.

The step that matters

Adding the milk mixture to the roux. Adding liquid gradually while stirring constantly keeps starch granules dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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