The (small) miracle of béchamel sauce


The (small) miracle of béchamel sauce
Making a béchamel sauce is going to confront you with a little miracle that happens every time: You pour milk over a roux, it's very liquid, you stir over a low heat, and then all of a sudden, miracle, the sauce sets, it thickens, you've got your béchamel.

Let's see what happened.
6,385 4/5 (4 reviews)
Grade this page:
Keywords for this post:SauceMethodPrincipleExplanationStarchTemperatureRouxConsistencyBéchamel
Last modified on: August 27th 2024
For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend
The (small) miracle of béchamel sauce

A basic sauce

louis bechameil

Béchamel is one of the staple sauces of French cuisine, found in a host of recipes. Its name comes from Louis Béchameil, who was maitre d'hôtel to Louis XIV.
Making it is quite simple: first a "roux" mixture of flour and butter, which is heated and colored (hence its name).

roux


Once the roux has reached the right color, cold milk is added, the mixture is very liquid, and you continue to cook and stir over low heat until it thickens (you'll find the full recipe here).
But why does it thicken? As you'd expect, there's no magic involved, just a little physics and chemistry.

Flour and starch

The secret lies in the roux's flour, which contains grains of starch, a complex sugar made up of glucose molecules rolled up into tiny little balls.

amidon

When the milk is added to the roux and heated, the temperature of the mixture gradually rises.
It's around 70°C that the magic happens: the grains of starch in the flour break up into smaller grains, starch molecules that begin to absorb the milk around them, up to 20 times their volume, thus increasing the sauce's viscosity.

This process, known as starch gelatinization, takes place between 70°C and 85°C, giving béchamel its characteristic thick, creamy consistency.
Note in passing that this process of starch gelatinization is also at work in, among other things, crème pâtissière or flan, where flour is often replaced by maïzena, a corn starch.

In short: Béchamel thickens because it contains flour that is heated, causing its starch grains to burst and absorb the milk around them.
So béchamel is not just a culinary classic, it's also a little chemistry lesson in action.

Lasts posts
Cake moulds
Cake moulds
When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25th 20251,0535
Thinning out herbs
Thinning out herbs
If you need to add a long-stemmed herb (tarragon, mint, verbena, thyme, etc.) to a recipe, you'll probably only need the leaves and not the stem, so you'll need to remove the leaves. Leaf removal means keeping only the beautiful leaves, and eliminating the ugly stems and leaves, but how do you do...
August 8th 20251,2405
Add a bay leaf
Add a bay leaf
Bay leaf: small in size, but big in flavor. You'll find it in hundreds of recipes, and it's often added to cooking meat, in a sauce or broth, usually accompanied by other herbs or products. It's a staple of Provençal, Mediterranean and Oriental cuisine, but not the only one. Usually, in a...
July 31th 20251,3365
Parsley stems
Parsley stems
Parsley, whether curly or flat, is a delicious ingredient in many recipes, where it is used both raw and cooked. When used raw, in a salad for example, where it always provides, alone or with other herbs, a remarkable freshness, only the leaves are kept. And when used cooked?
July 28th 20251,447 13
A drizzle of olive oil
A drizzle of olive oil
Often in a recipe, you have to "baste" vegetables, for example, before sending them to the oven. What the author means by this is that you need to put oil on top of the vegetables to cook them in the oven. Typically, we just quickly drizzle oil over the vegetables, hoping not to miss any, but...
July 13th 20251,5975

Other pages you may also like
Cake moulds
Cake moulds
When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25th 20251,0535
The time of the jams
The time of the jams
We are well into summer as I write this, and this is the time when most of the fruit is giving or about to give in full. And for many of us, it will also be the time for jams and jellies, one of the best ways to preserve fruit for the next winter.
July 12th 202125 K4.5
Clean your mixer easily
Clean your mixer easily
If you use a "bowl" or "blender" mixer, as opposed to a plunger, you've probably noticed that it's a bit of a hassle to clean it after use. And yet, with a simple trick, it can be done very quickly. See how here.
June 26th 20245,7035
A memo of utensil weights
A memo of utensil weights
You will no doubt have come across this problem while cooking: after starting a recipe, when you already have some ingredients in a pan and have maybe cooked them, you need to know the weight of the pan's contents so that you can take half out, or add the same weight of sugar, for example.
May 9th 201126 K4.6
Butter doesn't make you fat, unless you eat too much of it.
Butter doesn't make you fat, unless you eat too much of it.
Whenever I'm discussing cooking and recipes, there is one idea which comes up frequently, like this: "Oh no! But that's got butter in it" (I should add, for the sake of accuracy, that this is something I hear more frequently from women, who are almost all concerned with keeping their figure). ...
March 26th 201242 K4.5
Post a comment or question
Posted by:
I am not a leaving thing

Follow this page
If you are interested in this page, you can "follow" it, by entering your email address here. You will then receive a notification immediately each time the page is modified or a new comment is added. Please note that you will need to confirm this following.
I am not a leaving thing
Note: We'll never share your e-mail address with anyone else.
Alternatively: you can subscribe to the mailing list of cooling-ez.com , you will receive a e-mail for each new recipe published on the site.

Back to top of page