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Sauce

White Bechamel Sauce

A creamy white sauce made with flour, butter, vegetables, milk, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

White Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine flour and butter in a saucepan, kneading them together with a wooden spoon.

  2. Add the sliced vegetables, salt, and pepper, then moisten with the milk.

  3. Stir over medium heat.

  4. Boil sharply for 20 minutes, stirring to prevent burning.

Finish

  1. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve or cloth and transfer to a basin for use.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 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. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Binds with the flour to form a roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the roux thickens into a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Boil sharply for 20 minutes, stirring to prevent burning. Flour starch needs to reach boiling to swell fully and thicken, while the sauce's base of milk and solids can scorch on the bottom of the pan without constant stirring.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Fennelfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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