Cream Sauce (Make same as Thin White Sauce)

A basic roux-thickened sauce given in shorthand, on the assumption that the cook already knows the thin white sauce that precedes it in the chapter. The proportions listed here — 2 tablespoons each butter and flour to 1 cup liquid — are a medium sauce, not a thin one.

• The method it assumesMelt the butter, stir in the flour and cook the paste a minute or two without letting it colour, then add the liquid gradually off the heat or in a slow stream, whisking. Return to moderate heat and cook until it thickens and loses any raw-flour taste, three to five minutes.
• Thin, medium, thickPeriod books grade white sauce by roux per cup of liquid: 1 tablespoon each butter and flour is thin (for soups and creamed vegetables), 2 tablespoons is medium (for creaming fish or meat, and for gratins), 3 to 4 tablespoons is thick (for croquette bases and soufflés). The amounts printed here are the medium version.
• Which creamFor the cream sauce, use light cream or half-and-half. Heavy cream at 36 per cent fat over a full roux gives a heavy, greasy sauce; if that is all you have, thin it with milk or use half the flour.
• ScorchingCream catches on the pan bottom faster than milk does. Keep the heat below a hard boil and stir into the corners of the pan, or use a heavy-bottomed saucepan.
• SeasoningA quarter teaspoon of salt to a cup is modest by modern taste; taste and adjust the salt at the end. A grating of nutmeg is traditional in bechamel and is not listed here.
• YieldAbout one cup. It thickens further as it cools; loosen with a spoonful of hot milk before serving.