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Sauce

Bechamel Sauce

A white sauce made with butter, flour, milk, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Bechamel Sauce

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 ↓

Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and cook gently without browning.

  3. Gradually stir in the milk.

  4. Cook until it boils, stirring constantly.

  5. Add the single cream.

  6. Season to taste.

  7. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

  8. Serve.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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 milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the melted butter.
Butter
Forms the fat base with the flour, carrying flavour and helping the roux cook smoothly.
Milk
Forms the liquid that the roux thickens into a pourable sauce.
Single cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the roux gently without browning. Flour cooked in butter must be heated gently so it loses its raw taste and thickens well. Browning changes the colour and flavour, and the sauce then tastes toasty rather than neutral.

“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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