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Bechamel Sauce

A creamy sauce made from butter, flour, milk, and stock, seasoned with onion, carrot, bay leaf, parsley, peppercorns, and optional egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Prepare the stock

  1. In a pot, combine the onion, carrot, bay leaf, parsley, peppercorns, and chicken stock. Cook for 20 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour to the melted butter and stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually whisk in the milk and the strained chicken stock.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Finish with egg yolks

  1. If using, beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Add a little of the sauce to the egg yolks, mix well, then stir this mixture back into the sauce.

  3. Do not let the sauce boil after adding the egg yolks.

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. Butter + milktop 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
Forms the fat base that carries the flour and gives the sauce richness.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, pourable sauce as its starch swells.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the roux thickens, adding creaminess and a mild sweetness.
Chicken stock
Adds savoury depth and liquid to the sauce, flavoured by the aromatics it was cooked with.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and add thickening power and richness when tempered into it.

The step that matters

Do not let the sauce boil after adding the egg yolks. Egg proteins set when heated, so boiling after the yolks are added can scramble them and leave the sauce grainy. Tempering first with a little hot sauce helps prevent this.

Swap the onion

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

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

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