Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓
White Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sauce
Boil the milk and stock together.
Season with coarse sea salt.
Mix the flour with a little milk to form a paste.
Add the flour mixture to the boiling milk and stock, stirring constantly until thickened.
Serve
Serve immediately.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Thickens the liquid as its starch swells and sets when heated.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that gives the sauce its body and creamy moisture.
- Light stock
- Adds savoury flavour to the liquid base of the sauce.
The step that matters
Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling liquid. Stirring constantly spreads the flour paste evenly so it does not form lumps. As the starch heats in the liquid, it swells and thickens the sauce, so the sauce should be stirred until it has thickened.
“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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