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Veloute Sauce
2 tablespoons butter 1 cup White Stock 2 tablespoons flour 1/4 teaspoon salt Few grains pepper Make same as Thin White Sauce.
A one-line recipe that depends entirely on two other entries in the book: the white stock and the thin white sauce method. Here is what both amount to.
- White stockAn unbrowned stock from veal, chicken or a mix of the two, with the bones and aromatics simmered but never allowed to color; note that the book's own white stock may already be salted. A good low-sodium chicken stock stands in acceptably; avoid anything dark, roasted or heavily seasoned, since the point of the sauce is a pale ivory color.
- The method it refers toMelt the butter, stir in the flour and cook the roux gently until it foams and smells faintly of biscuit, without taking on color. Add the hot stock gradually, whisking, and simmer until it thickens and no raw flour remains.
- Keep it whiteThis is the hinge. A velouté that browns even slightly becomes a different sauce, and once the roux darkens there is no undoing it. Use moderate heat and a light-colored pan so you can see what is happening.
- Proportions and thicknessTwo tablespoons each of butter and flour to one cup of liquid gives a pourable sauce that coats a spoon, not a thick binding sauce. If it tightens too much as it simmers, thin it with a little more hot stock.
- Cooking timeThe book gives none. Ten to fifteen minutes at a bare simmer, stirring, is enough to cook out the flour taste; anything less leaves the sauce pasty.
- SeasoningThe quarter teaspoon of salt suits a stock that is unsalted or only lightly salted. Taste at the end and adjust, since commercial stock may already carry most of the salt the sauce needs.
- YieldSlightly under a cup, enough to sauce two to four servings of poached fish or chicken. It can also serve as a base for richer sauces.
- Holding itPress a piece of buttered paper or plastic directly onto the surface if it must wait, or a skin will form. Reheat gently and whisk smooth rather than boiling it hard.
Velouté is simply the French for velvety, and the sauce carries no milk or cream in its classic form — the body comes from a pale roux and a light meat or poultry stock. In the classic French system, codified by Carême and later reworked by Escoffier, it stood as one of the mother sauces, a neutral base from which other sauces were built by adding egg yolks, cream, mushroom liquor, herbs or wine. American cookery-school books of this period, of which this is one, taught it alongside white sauce, and the method is the same one the entry cross-references; here the liquid is stock rather than milk. That closeness is why the entry can be a single sentence.