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Bechamel Sauce
1 pint milk 4 tablespoons butter 4 tablespoons flour 2 tablespoons chopped onions 2/3 cup chopped celery 1 1/2 teaspoons salt Add the chopped celery and the onion to the milk, and heat in a double boiler. Rub the flour and butter together, and add the hot liquid slowly. Return to the double boiler, and cook fifteen to twenty minutes. Add the salt just before serving.
A classic infused white sauce, written for a double boiler and a cook who already knew what a béchamel should look like. Two things the text leaves unsaid: strain it, and cook the flour.
- Strain the milkThe onion and celery are flavourings, not body. Heat them in the milk, then pour it through a sieve before combining with the roux, or you will have a lumpy, fibrous sauce rather than a smooth one.
- Cook the roux first"Rub the flour and butter together" makes a raw paste. Melt the butter and cook the flour in it for two or three minutes over low heat before the milk goes in, or the sauce is more likely to taste of raw flour.
- Adding the liquidAdd the hot strained milk in stages, whisking smooth after each addition. Four tablespoons each of butter and flour to a pint of milk gives a medium-bodied sauce, thick enough to coat vegetables or bind a gratin.
- The double boilerIt guards against scorching, which matters on a range with poor low-heat control. A heavy saucepan over the lowest burner setting does much the same job in less time, provided you stir. Keep the fifteen to twenty minutes of cooking regardless.
- Salt at the endThe recipe holds the salt back until just before serving; it does not say why. A pint of sauce will take about 1 1/2 teaspoons, but taste before committing to all of it.
- YieldRoughly two cups, enough to sauce vegetables for six or to bind a moderate casserole. It thickens considerably as it cools; loosen with a little hot milk when reheating.
- SkinIf it must stand, press buttered paper or plastic directly onto the surface. A skin that forms and is then stirred back in leaves lumps that no amount of whisking removes.
Béchamel is the plainest of the French mother sauces and the one that travelled furthest into English and American home cooking, usually under the name white sauce. It is traditionally credited to Louis de Béchameil, a financier and steward at the court of Louis XIV, though the attribution is generally taken to be honorific rather than documented. The version here steeps onion and celery in the milk rather than relying on flour and milk alone. An infused milk sauce of this kind gives body and savour to vegetables, eggs and croquettes without recourse to meat stock.