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Sauce

French Bechamel Sauce

A creamy sauce made from fowl bones, veal scraps, ham, vegetables, stock, cream, arrowroot, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

French Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the bones of the fowl, veal scraps, ham, carrot, mushrooms, onion, cold water, mace, thyme, parsley, and peppercorns in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer until the liquid reduces to about ½ cup.

  3. If the stock lacks richness, stir in gelatin until dissolved.

  4. Strain the sauce.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate saucepan, bring the cream and arrowroot to a boil.

  2. Gradually mix in the white stock and boil for a few minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and add lemon juice or vinegar and salt to taste.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides richness and a smooth, velvety body to the sauce.
Arrowroot
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce without making it cloudy.
Fowl bones
Give the stock its meaty, savory body as they simmer.
Gelatin
Adds body and mouthfeel to the stock when it is thin.

The step that matters

Adding the stock to the boiling cream and arrowroot. Stock poured in slowly and stirred constantly keeps the arrowroot dispersed, so lumps do not form. Arrowroot thickens as it heats, and boiling it for a few minutes lets it reach full thickness and stay stable.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, carrot, mushroom, onion, thyme, parsley):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, carrot, mushroom, onion, thyme, parsley. 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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