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Cream Sauce (Heat one table-spoon butter)
Heat one table-spoon butter in a skillet, add a tea-spoon flour, and stir until perfectly smooth, then add gradually one cup of cold milk, let boil up once, season to taste with salt and pepper, and This is very nice for vegetables, omelets, fish, or sweet serve. breads.
A plain white sauce in miniature — one tablespoon butter, one teaspoon flour, one cup milk. The proportions are much thinner than a modern béchamel, and the printed text has been scrambled by the compositor.
- The garbled lineThe closing sentence has been transposed in setting. It should read: "season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve. This is very nice for vegetables, omelets, fish, or sweet breads." Sweetbreads is one word — the thymus or pancreas of a calf, not a bread.
- The ratio is very looseA teaspoon of flour to a cup of milk gives a sauce barely thicker than cream. For a pouring sauce that will coat a vegetable, use a tablespoon each of butter and flour to the cup of milk; for anything meant to bind, two of each.
- Cook the roux briefly"Stir until perfectly smooth" understates it. Let the butter and flour bubble together for a minute before the milk goes in, or the sauce tastes of raw flour.
- Cold milk into hot rouxThe instruction to add cold milk gradually is sound and still the surest route to a lump-free sauce. Add a splash, stir it to a paste, then loosen with the rest.
- "Let boil up once" is not enoughA brief boil sets the starch but leaves a floury edge. Hold it at a bare simmer for three or four minutes, stirring, before seasoning.
- Skillet versus saucepanA wide skillet evaporates the milk fast and scorches at the rim. A small heavy saucepan suits a single cup of sauce better.
- YieldAbout one cup — enough to dress vegetables for four, or to nap two omelets.
This is a plain white sauce of the kind common in nineteenth-century American cooking, a simplified relative of the French béchamel without its onion, bay and long infusion. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping was published in 1877, having grown out of a compilation of contributions gathered in Ohio. Sauces of this sort were commonly poured over boiled vegetables such as cauliflower, onions and asparagus. The suggested pairing with sweetbreads places it in slightly more ambitious company: sweetbreads were often served with a bland cream sauce. The recipe's brevity is typical of the book, which assumed a reader who already knew what a sauce should look like and needed only the proportions.