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Bechamelle Sauce

A creamy sauce made by thickening reduced sauce with boiling cream, optionally adding consommé glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Bechamelle Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place about 1 pint of reduced sauce in a stewpan over gentle heat.

  2. Stir continuously until it thickens to a paste-like consistency.

  3. Mix in 1 pint of boiling cream.

  4. If desired, add a small bit of consommé glaze.

  5. Boil until it reaches the usual thickness of sauce.

  6. Squeeze through a fine sieve into a clean stewpan.

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. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Reduced sauce
Forms the base that thickens into a paste and gives the sauce its body.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and moisture, loosening the base into a smooth, pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Stir continuously while thickening. Stirring keeps the mixture moving so it heats evenly and does not scorch or form lumps on the bottom of the pan. Gentle heat helps the sauce thicken smoothly.

“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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