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Cheese Sauce II

A simple cheese sauce made with flour, butter, milk, and grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Cheese Sauce II

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Whisk in the flour, salt, and paprika or cayenne to form a roux.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until the sauce thickens.

  4. Stir in the grated cheese until melted.

Serve

  1. Pour the cheese sauce over toast or crackers.

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the milk into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Provides fat for the roux and carries flavour into the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the sauce as it heats.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce, adding rich flavour and a creamy body.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Adding milk gradually while stirring constantly keeps the flour roux smooth. Flour clumps if liquid is poured in too fast, leaving lumps in the sauce.

“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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