Sauce Velouté
(Rich White Sauce.) Ingredients.
Two ounces of Butter.
Two ounces of Flour.
One pint of good White Stock made from Chicken,
The page as printed breaks off mid-ingredient, so what survives is the classic proportion rather than the method: equal weights of butter and flour to a pint of white stock. That ratio is all a competent cook needs, but a few period conventions are worth spelling out.
- The ratio is the recipeTwo ounces butter, two ounces flour, one pint stock gives a pourable coating sauce, roughly 1:1:10 by weight. For a thicker sauce to bind a fish filling, reduce the stock to three-quarters of a pint.
- Imperial pintA British pint is 20 fl oz, not 16. Use 570 ml of stock, or the sauce will come out noticeably stiffer than intended.
- A white roux, not blondThe roux -- cook the butter and flour together over gentle heat for two or three minutes so the flour loses its rawness, without letting it brown; classical velouté uses a roux taken only to pale blond.
- "Good white stock"The recipe specifies chicken: a clear, unroasted stock. Shop-bought chicken stock is workable, but salt it yourself, since the sauce reduces.
- Add the stock hot, and slowlyCold liquid into hot roux is the standard cause of lumps. Warm the stock and beat in the first ladleful to a paste before loosening with the rest.
- The simmer is the pointThe sauce should be skimmed and cooked out over low heat, well beyond a few minutes, so the flour loses its raw taste and the sauce clarifies; classical kitchens simmered it far longer still. A five-minute version tastes pasty.
- FinishingStrain through a fine sieve or muslin. Off the heat, a liaison of egg yolk and cream, or a knob of cold butter, is the conventional enrichment for fish; do not let it boil afterwards or the yolk will curdle.
- YieldA pint of stock makes about 500 ml of finished sauce, enough for six to eight portions of poached fish.
Velouté — from the French for velvety — is one of the small group of foundation sauces codified by Carême in the early nineteenth century and later formalised by Escoffier as a mother sauce, alongside béchamel, espagnole, tomato and hollandaise. Its logic is simple: the same white roux that makes béchamel with milk makes velouté with stock, and the stock is chosen to match what it is served with. Books of this type were written for cooks in large private houses; the recipe assumes "good white stock" is to hand and so gives no instruction for making the stock at all. The daughter sauces — suprême, allemande, and the wine-and-cream fish sauces such as vin blanc and normande — all begin exactly here.