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Bechamel, Maigre
Use milk and water instead of the stock made with animal juices. Blend one ounce of flour with one ounce of butter. Simmer for twenty minutes the following ingredients in one pint of milk with half the quantity of water and a little salt; two or three small mushrooms, a few sprigs of parsley, two onions, and a blade of mace. When it has boiled long enough to acquire the desired flavour, strain and put it again into the stewpan with the flour and butter, keeping it stirred until perfectly smooth, then strain it again. Some cooks mix lemon-juice and yolks of eggs with Bechamel in order to enrich it. They accomplish their object and make the sauce richer, but they destroy its distinctive character, for by these additions they produce not Bechamel, but Allemande sauce. Cost, about 6d. per pint.
A lean (meatless) béchamel built on an infused milk rather than veal stock. The method is sound; only the vocabulary and the proportions need translating.
- "Maigre" means meatlessA maigre sauce is one made without meat or meat stock, for fast days and Lent. Here milk and water stand in for the white stock of the standard béchamel.
- The liquidOne pint of milk with "half the quantity of water" means half a pint of water — 20 fl oz milk to 10 fl oz water in imperial measure, or about 2½ cups milk to 1¼ cups water in US cups. Expect some reduction over the twenty-minute infusion.
- Flour and butter by weightOne ounce each is roughly 2 tablespoons butter to a scant ¼ cup flour. Against 1½ pints of liquid before reduction, this gives a thin pouring sauce, correct for napping vegetables, eggs or fish rather than for binding a filling.
- Cook the roux firstNot a cooked roux -- The recipe blends the flour and butter and adds them to the strained liquid, rather than cooking a roux before the milk goes in. However you do it, keep it pale — a béchamel should stay white.
- A blade of maceMace is the lacy outer coat of the nutmeg, sold in flat "blades" then and mostly as ground powder now. One blade is often reckoned at roughly a quarter teaspoon of ground mace, though such conversions vary; or use a light grating of nutmeg. It is a warm, gentle spice, not a sharp one.
- Strain twice, and whyThe first straining removes the mushroom, parsley, onion and mace; the second catches any flour lumps and the skin that forms while stirring.
- Onions and mushroomsTake the "two onions" as small ones; two large modern onions will bully the milk. The mushrooms are for savour, not body — button or cremini both work.
- Yield and costAbout a pint of finished sauce, enough for four to six servings poured over fish or vegetables. The "6d. per pint" is a Victorian household costing and has no modern equivalent.
- The point about AllemandeThe author is drawing a line, not banning a technique. Enriching with egg yolks and lemon does produce a good sauce, but it is a different one, and it will curdle if you let it boil after the yolks go in.
Béchamel is named for Louis de Béchameil, a financier and steward of the household of Louis XIV, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented and the sauce is generally thought to predate him; contemporaries joked that he had been given credit for a cook's work. By the nineteenth century it had been codified in France as one of the foundation sauces, and English books like Cassell's inherited both the recipe and the French insistence on classification — hence the sharp aside here about Allemande. The maigre version mattered practically as well as gastronomically: Catholic fast days created steady demand for sauces that could dress fish and vegetables without a drop of meat stock, and a milk-and-water infusion of onion, parsley, mushroom and mace was one answer.