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White Sauce
1 cupful white stock; 1/2 cupful cream; 2 tablespoonfuls butter; 2 tablespoonfuls flour; 1/2 saltspoonful salt; a dash of white pepper. Cook the flour and butter together until very smooth and bubbling, but taking care that it does not become colored. Have the stock and cream hot, and add it, a little at a time, to the butter and flour. Beat until smooth, and let it come to a boil. Strain, and serve.
A basic velouté-style white sauce, thickened with a pale roux and enriched with cream. The whole thing takes about ten minutes and lives or dies on keeping the roux uncolored.
- White stockThis means a pale, unbrowned stock — veal or chicken, made from unroasted bones. A low-sodium chicken stock is the closest supermarket equivalent; taste before adding the salt, since modern stocks are usually seasoned already.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so half a saltspoonful is an eighth of a teaspoon. That is a very small amount of salt for a cup and a half of liquid.
- The roux is the hingeCook the butter and flour over medium-low heat only until it foams and smells faintly of biscuit, roughly two minutes. Any browning turns this into a blond or brown sauce, and the recipe explicitly warns against letting it colour.
- Hot liquid, added graduallyWarming the stock and cream before adding is what keeps the sauce from lumping. Add the first quarter cup and beat it to a paste before loosening with the rest.
- Bring it to a boilThe boil is not optional — flour-thickened sauces only reach full thickness and lose their raw taste once they have bubbled. Hold it at a bare simmer for two or three minutes, stirring, then take it off.
- StrainingPushing the finished sauce through a fine sieve catches any flour specks and gives the glossy texture the period expected. Do it while hot; the sauce stiffens quickly as it cools.
- Yield and useAbout one and a half cups, enough to sauce four servings. It is a base sauce, intended to be seasoned or extended for whatever it is served with; if you add a salty liquid such as shellfish liquor, reduce the salt further.
- Holding itA skin forms within minutes. Press plastic wrap or a butter paper directly onto the surface, or float a teaspoon of melted butter on top, and reheat gently with a splash of stock.