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Brown Cream Sauce
1 1/2 cups milk 1/2 cup cream 3 tablespoons flour 1 tablespoon browned flour 1 teaspoon salt Stir the brown and white flour smooth with a little of the milk. Heat the remaining milk and cream to boiling, stir into it the flour mixture, cook till thickened, and add salt. Milk instead of cream may be used by adding two tablespoons of butter substitute.
A fat-free white sauce tinted and flavoured with toasted flour. The technique is a slurry rather than a roux, so the hinge is dispersion: the flour must be perfectly smooth in cold milk before it meets the hot milk, or the sauce will be lumpy no matter how long it cooks.
- Browned flourToast plain flour in a dry heavy skillet over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it is the colour of a hazelnut shell and smells biscuity, then cool it. Browning reduces its thickening power, and it is used here in small quantity, one spoonful against three of white flour, chiefly for colour and flavour.
- Slurry, not rouxMix both flours with about a quarter cup of the cold milk to a smooth cream, then pour it into the boiling milk and cream in a thin stream while whisking. Adding hot liquid to dry flour is the usual route to lumps.
- Cook it out"Cook till thickened" is not long enough on its own. Once it thickens, hold it at a bare simmer for three to five minutes, stirring, to lose the raw-flour taste. Use a heavy pan and moderate heat; a milk sauce with no fat scorches readily.
- Butter substituteThe period term covers margarine and, in health-reform kitchens of the era, nut butters and vegetable shortenings. Butter works, or two tablespoons of any neutral fat, whisked in at the end off the heat.
- SaltA full teaspoon in two cups of sauce is assertive by modern taste. Add half, then correct at the end, particularly if you have used salted butter.
- Yield and useMakes about two cups of medium-bodied sauce, enough for four to six servings over vegetables, toast or croquettes, or thinned with stock or more milk as the base of a cream soup.
- Holding itIt will skin over as it stands. Press plastic film or buttered paper on the surface, and reheat gently over low heat or in a water bath, whisking in a little milk if it has stiffened.