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Thin White Sauce
2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 2 cups milk 1 teaspoon salt Put together the same as white sauce. Add one tablespoon of capers for caper sauce.
A ratio recipe rather than a procedure: two tablespoons each of fat and flour to two cups of milk gives the thinnest of the classic white sauces, barely more than pouring consistency. The method is assumed from the book's standard white sauce entry.
- The method it points back toPresumably melt the butter, stir in the flour and cook the roux a minute or two over low heat without letting it colour, then add the milk gradually, whisking, and simmer until it thickens. "Put together the same as white sauce" refers the cook to the book's own white sauce entry; only the proportions change.
- Cook the flour outThe single thing that separates a good white sauce from a pasty one is giving the roux enough time before the milk goes in. A minute of gentle bubbling is the minimum; raw flour taste is the usual fault.
- How thin is thinAt one tablespoon of flour per cup of milk this is a pouring or soup-base consistency, not a binding sauce. Period books commonly graded white sauce as thin (1 tbsp flour per cup), medium (2) and thick (3 to 4); use this one for cream soups, for moistening vegetables, or as a base for caper sauce.
- SaltA full teaspoon for two cups is on the assertive side by modern habit, especially if the sauce is going over already-seasoned vegetables. Start with half and adjust at the end.
- CapersDrain them and add at the very end, off the heat, so the brine does not thin the sauce or curdle it. A little of the caper liquid, or a squeeze of lemon, sharpens it usefully.
- YieldAbout two cups, enough to sauce vegetables for four to six, or to serve as the liquid base for a cream soup for four.
- Keeping it smoothA skin forms fast on a thin sauce. Press a round of parchment or plastic directly onto the surface if it must wait, and rewarm gently, whisking, rather than over direct high heat.
White sauce in an American household manual of this period is the domesticated descendant of French béchamel, stripped of its onion, bay and veal stock and reduced to butter, flour, milk and salt — a formula that cooking-school teachers of the late nineteenth century drilled as a ratio to be memorised rather than a dish to be looked up. Its appearance in a meatless cookbook is no accident: without meat drippings or gravy, a milk-based sauce did the work of carrying richness and moisture to vegetables, eggs and grain dishes, and a thin one could be stretched into a cream soup by adding the puréed vegetable of the day. The caper variation is the older European trick of turning a plain white sauce sharp, traditionally served with boiled mutton but adapted here for meatless plates.