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Bechamel Sauce

A creamy sauce made from butter, flour, milk, and egg yolk, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional nutmeg or brandy.

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

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix together the butter and flour until well combined.

  2. Add the milk gradually, stirring continuously until the sauce thickens.

  3. Remove the saucepan from the heat.

Finish and season

  1. In a cup, beat the egg yolk with the water.

  2. Stir the egg mixture into the sauce until well mixed.

  3. Season with salt and pepper for vegetables, or add nutmeg and brandy or wine for puddings.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, while forming the base roux with flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, which thickens as the starch swells.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and extra body when stirred into the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually. Pouring milk in slowly while stirring constantly keeps the starch dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, egg, pepper, brandy):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, pepper, brandy. 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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