Home › The Principles of Cookery › WHITE BECHAMEL SAUCE (to make a small quantity)
WHITE BECHAMEL SAUCE (to make a small quantity)
Put two ounces of butter and two ounces of flour into a saucepan, and with a wooden spoon stir them briskly over the fire to a smooth paste. Add gradually three-quarters of a pint of milk, together with a small onion, two or three sticks of celery, cut up small, half a carrot thinly sliced, half a bay-leaf, a very small sprig of thyme, a bunch of parsley, a little nutmeg, and a pinch of salt. Stir the sauce over a quick fire till it is pleasantly flavoured, strain it into a basin, and it will be fit for use. By increasing the quantities, and preserving the proportions, a larger quantity of sauce may be made if required. Time to boil the sauce, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 7d. Sufficient for a little more than half a pint of sauce.
A white roux thinned with milk and infused with aromatics — the Victorian béchamel, made in one pan rather than by steeping the milk first. The measurements are imperial, so the liquid is more generous than an American reading suggests.
- The pint is imperialThree-quarters of an imperial pint is 15 fl oz, about 1¾ US cups. With 2 oz each of butter and flour that gives a fairly thick sauce, which is what the book intends: it reduces further over the twenty minutes.
- Add the milk in stagesPour a little at a time and beat it smooth before the next addition. A balloon whisk does this better than the wooden spoon specified, though a spoon is fine if you work the pan corners.
- "Quick fire" needs temperingA brisk heat is meant to drive the flavour out of the vegetables, but a flour-thickened milk sauce catches on the base easily. Bring it up quickly, then hold it at a bare simmer and stir often; a heavy pan helps.
- Cook the flour outStir the butter and flour together for a couple of minutes before any milk goes in, keeping it pale — no colour at all. Skipping this leaves the raw, pasty taste that gives white sauce its poor reputation.
- The aromatics are the pointOnion, celery, carrot, bay, thyme, parsley and nutmeg are what separate this from plain white sauce. Twenty minutes is the minimum for them to give anything up; taste before straining and give it longer if it is still flat.
- Strain and pressPush the sauce through a fine sieve and press the vegetables firmly to extract the liquid clinging to them. Discard the solids.
- YieldAbout 10 fl oz (a generous 1¼ US cups) after reduction and straining, as the recipe's own 'a little more than half a pint' indicates. The 7d. is a period ingredient cost and can be ignored.
- Keeping itA skin forms fast. Press buttered paper or cling film onto the surface, or float a few flakes of butter on top, if it is not going straight to the table.
Béchamel is generally traced to the court cookery of seventeenth-century France and named for Louis de Béchameil, a financier and steward in Louis XIV's household, though the attribution is traditional and the sauce almost certainly predates him. The classical French method infuses the milk with the onion and herbs separately, then strains it before it meets the roux; Cassell's throws everything into the same saucepan and strains at the end. That shortcut is characteristic of the book's approach to French cookery — the repertoire of the grand kitchen reduced to something a competent servant could produce alongside the rest of dinner. The note that quantities may be scaled while preserving proportions suggests a sauce treated as a foundation to be drawn on repeatedly through a meal rather than made for a single dish.