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Yellow Bechamel
To the above rule add 3 egg yolks slightly beaten and mixed with half a cup of cream; heat in a double boiler until thoroughly blended.
This is a variation, not a standalone recipe: it assumes you have just made the book's plain bechamel and are enriching it at the last moment. The whole thing hinges on keeping the eggs below the point where they scramble.
- "The above rule"The base is the book's plain bechamel, which this entry does not restate. Have it finished and smooth before the yolks go anywhere near it.
- Temper the yolksBeat the 3 yolks with the half cup of cream, then whisk a ladleful of the hot sauce into them before returning the mixture to the pan. Adding cold yolks straight to hot sauce sets them in threads that no amount of whisking will smooth out.
- Heat, do not cookIn the double boiler keep the water at a bare simmer and pull the sauce when it coats a spoon and holds a drawn line, which in modern terms is somewhere around 175-180F. Yolks begin to set not far above that; the flour in the base gives some protection, but it does not make the sauce boil-proof.
- Cream"Cream" is unspecified here, and in books of this period it was often closer to what we would now call light cream than to modern heavy cream. A richer cream gives a thicker sauce; a lighter one gives a thinner, paler sauce more prone to breaking.
- No reheating over direct heatOnce enriched, the sauce cannot be boiled or brought back on a burner. Hold it over warm water, and thin with a spoonful of hot stock if it tightens as it stands.
- Season at the endThe original gives no seasoning in this variation. Salt, white pepper and a few drops of lemon go in after the yolks are set; adding acid earlier encourages curdling.
Bechamel is generally traced to Louis de Bechameil, a financier and steward in the household of Louis XIV, though cooks of the period were already thickening milk sauces with roux and the attribution is traditional rather than documented. A yolk-and-cream liaison of this kind is close to the finish French kitchens used for sauce allemande or a liaison-finished veloute, and sauces of the type were commonly served with boiled and baked fish in American cookery around the turn of the century.