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Bechamel Sauce

A creamy sauce made from onion, carrot, butter, bay leaf, parsley, salt, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Infuse the flavors

  1. Combine the onion, carrot, butter, bay leaf, parsley, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture, reserving about 3 cups of the stock.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the hot milk to the stock.

  2. In a separate pot, make a white sauce by combining the milk mixture with the flour and 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. Milk + buttertop 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
Adds fat and richness, carrying the flavors of the aromatics into the sauce.
Flour
Starch thickens the hot liquid into a smooth, coating sauce as it swells and sets.
Milk
Forms the liquid base, giving the sauce its body and creamy texture.

The step that matters

Combining the flour with the milk mixture. Flour clumps when it hits hot liquid unless its starch granules are dispersed first. Blending it smoothly before or while heating keeps the sauce lump-free as the starch thickens.

Swap the onion

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

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

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