White Sauce
2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 1 cup milk 1/2 teaspoon salt Dash of red pepper Make exactly the same as cream sauce, modifying it if desired by the addition of other flavorings.
A basic roux-thickened milk sauce, given in the shorthand of a book that assumes you have already read the cream sauce entry a page or two earlier. The proportions are the standard medium white sauce still in use.
- The stray half cup of milkThe trailing "1/2 cup milk" does not fit the list above it, and may be a stray line from a neighbouring variation; its purpose is unclear. Use 1 cup of milk to 2 tablespoons each butter and flour for a medium sauce; more milk gives a thinner sauce.
- Method, since it is not repeated hereMelt the butter, stir in the flour and cook it two or three minutes over low heat without letting it colour, then add the milk gradually, whisking. Simmer three to five minutes after it thickens to cook out the raw flour taste.
- Red pepper"Red pepper" in American books of this era means ground cayenne, not paprika and not chilli flakes. A dash is roughly a pinch, well under 1/8 teaspoon.
- Milk temperatureCold milk added slowly to a warm roux works perfectly well; scalded milk is faster but not required. Lumps come from adding too much liquid at once, not from its temperature.
- SaltHalf a teaspoon per cup is generous by modern palates, especially if the sauce is going over already-seasoned food or into a gratin with cheese. Start with a quarter and correct at the end.
- "Other flavorings"The recipe names none. Additions usual in books of this kind include grated cheese off the heat, a grating of nutmeg, mustard, chopped hard-boiled egg, or an onion and bay leaf steeped in the milk beforehand and strained out.
- YieldAbout one cup, enough to sauce vegetables for four or to bind a small gratin. It thickens further as it cools; loosen with a spoonful of milk when reheating.
White sauce is the American domestic-science rendering of French béchamel, and is reduced to a memorised ratio: equal volumes of butter and flour — two tablespoons of each to a cup of milk. Cooking schools of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are often said to have taught it as a foundation exercise, with thin, medium and thick versions, so that one technique would produce creamed vegetables, croquette binding, soufflé base and scalloped dishes alike. That is why this entry can be three lines long and cross-reference another page — the reader was expected to know the ratio and to vary it. The loose-leaf format of Mrs. Fryer's book suits exactly this kind of reference cooking, where a household kept the skeleton of a method on hand and filled in the flavourings from whatever the larder held.