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Cream Sauce (Cup milk or part cream)
1 cup milk, or part cream 2 tablespoons flour 1 1/2 tablespoons cold water 1/3 teaspoon salt Heat the milk to boiling in a double boiler. Put the flour into a bowl, and with a batter whip (not a spoon) stir the flour smooth with the cold water. Then, using the batter whip, whip the flour mixture in a small stream into the hot milk. Allow it to cook five minutes. Add the salt. Unless one has a fireless cooker, those cereal preparations that require long cooking are more suitable to be used in the winter time, when no extra fire would be necessary in order to cook them the required length of time.
A flour-and-water slurry thickener rather than a roux, which gives a lighter, less nutty sauce than the butter-based version most cooks know. It comes together in about ten minutes.
- The hingeThe flour must be smooth in the cold water before it meets hot milk, and it must go in as a thin stream while you whisk. Dumped in at once it seizes into lumps that are hard to beat out afterwards.
- Why no butterThis is a fat-free white sauce; slurry-thickened sauces of this kind turn up in plain and economical cookery of the period. If you want a conventional bechamel texture, whisk in a tablespoon of butter at the end, off the heat.
- Batter whipA period wire whisk. Any balloon or flat whisk works; the instruction is simply not to use a spoon, which will not break up flour paste.
- Double boilerPresumably to keep the milk from scorching over a direct fire. A heavy-bottomed saucepan over low heat works, though milk still catches easily, so stir the bottom and corners.
- Cooking timeThe recipe gives five minutes over simmering water, which also cooks out the raw-flour taste. Over direct heat it will thicken faster; taste for chalkiness before you stop.
- SeasoningSalt only, a third of a teaspoon for a cup of milk. White pepper and a scrape of nutmeg are common additions to white sauces, though this recipe calls for neither.
- YieldAbout one cup of medium-bodied sauce, enough to coat vegetables or creamed fish for two to three people. For a thinner pouring sauce use one tablespoon of flour; for a thick sauce, three.