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BECHAMEL, OR FRENCH WHITE SAUCE (another way)
As white stock is the foundation for this sauce it must be prepared first. Boil down an old fowl, two or three pounds of the knuckle of veal, and three of very lean ham, with the white parts of four carrots, two onions, one blade of mace, some white peppercorns, two table-spoonfuls of salt, and an ounce of butter, in four or five quarts of water. Cut up the fowl and veal, and put them with the ham to simmer, in a small quantity of water, till the juices are extracted; then throw in the full quantity of water, about three and a half quarts to the other ingredients. Let the liquid simmer from four to five hours. Skim and strain till clear, when it is ready for the Bechamel. Mix a table-spoonful of arrowroot with a pint of cream, and when well blended let it simmer in a carefully-cleaned pan for four or five minutes. Make one pint of the stock hot and pour it into the cream; simmer slowly for ten minutes or until it thickens. If too thick add a little stock. Time, two hours. Probable cost, 1s. per pint.
This is béchamel in the older French sense: a white sauce built on veal-and-fowl stock rather than milk alone, thickened with arrowroot instead of flour. Almost all the work is in the stock.
- The hinge: keep everything paleNothing here should colour. Sweat the meats in their own juices without letting them catch, skim diligently, and never let the stock boil hard — a rolling boil emulsifies fat and clouds the liquid past rescue. Barely trembling is the correct heat for the whole four to five hours.
- An old fowlA boiling hen, tough and gelatinous, is what the recipe wants and what supermarkets no longer stock. A 4–5 lb stewing hen from a farm butcher is closest; a roasting chicken of the same weight works but yields less body, so expect to add a chicken foot or two, or reduce further.
- Scale, honestlyFour to five quarts of water over roughly nine to eleven pounds of meat and bone (the fowl's weight is not stated; the recipe elsewhere says 'about three and a half quarts' of water) is a large batch that yields perhaps three quarts of finished stock. The sauce itself needs only one pint of it. Halving or quartering the stock quantities is straightforward, though a smaller pot reduces faster.
- Knuckle of vealThe veal shank, sawn across, for its gelatine. Ask the butcher to cut it; a whole knuckle will not fit most domestic pans. Veal bones alone are an acceptable substitute if meat is scarce.
- Very lean hamThree pounds of lean uncooked or lightly cured ham, not modern sweet-cured or smoked ham, which will overwhelm a white sauce. Combined with two tablespoons of salt this stock will be assertively seasoned; taste before salting the finished sauce at all.
- Blade of maceOne flat sliver of the dried aril, the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed, sold whole in spice shops. About a quarter teaspoon of ground mace stands in, but strain the stock through muslin afterwards.
- Arrowroot, not flourA tablespoon of arrowroot to a pint of cream gives a glossy, translucent sauce rather than the opaque one a roux produces. Arrowroot also breaks down with prolonged heat, so the ten-minute simmer at the end is the maximum — push it further and the sauce thins and will not recover.
- Temper the stock inHave the stock hot when it meets the hot cream, and pour it in gradually while stirring. Cold stock hitting thickened cream sets up lumps and can split it.
- Yield and useAbout a quart of sauce, a little less after simmering, enough for a large dish of chicken or veal blanquette, or for coating vegetables and eggs for eight to ten. Cover the surface with buttered paper or film if it must stand, or it will skin.
Béchamel is generally traced to Louis de Béchameil, a financier and steward in the household of Louis XIV, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented and the sauce may well predate him. What matters more is the difference visible here: the older French sauce was built on white stock and cream, costed in this book at a shilling the pint, while the milk-and-roux sauce that now carries the name came to dominate later. Cassell's prints more than one version, as the heading 'another way' indicates. The arrowroot is a Victorian touch — imported, and prized for producing a clear sheen that flour could not.