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Thick Cream Sauce
2 tablespoon butter 2 1/2 tablespoons flour 1 cup milk or cream 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon white pepper Make as directed for "Thin Cream Sauce."
A standard white sauce at the thick end of the scale, given as a ratio rather than a method — the book expects you to have read the thin version a few lines earlier. The technique is the same in every case: melt, stir in flour, cook briefly, add liquid.
- The method it points toThe method it points to is the standard one -- melt the butter over low heat, stir in the flour and cook the paste for a minute or two without letting it colour, then add the milk gradually, whisking, and simmer until thickened. Cooking the roux before the liquid goes in is what removes the raw-flour taste.
- Add the milk warm and slowlyAdd the milk slowly -- adding it all in one go is a common cause of lumps. Add it in three or four additions, whisking smooth between each; some cooks warm it first.
- What "thick" means hereRoughly 2 1/2 tablespoons of flour per cup of liquid gives a sauce that mounds on a spoon and sets when cool. It is the binding grade — for croquettes, creamed fillings, and coating mixtures that must hold their shape — not a pouring sauce.
- The other gradesFor reference, thin sauce in books of this period is about 1 tablespoon flour per cup, medium about 2. The butter tracks roughly with the flour.
- Milk or creamCream makes a richer sauce but thickens further as it reduces; with cream you may want a touch more milk at the end to loosen it. The recipe gives milk and cream as equal options.
- White pepperSpecified for appearance rather than flavour — black pepper leaves visible flecks in a white sauce. Ground white pepper is milder and slightly musty; use it or leave the pepper out.
- Simmer it outGive the finished sauce three to five minutes at a bare simmer, stirring. Flour needs that time to swell fully, and a sauce pulled too early will thin again as it stands.
- YieldAbout one cup. It skins over as it cools; press plastic wrap or buttered paper onto the surface if it must wait.
Sauce recipes graded by thickness — thin, medium, thick — were a hallmark of American cookery instruction from the 1890s onward, when domestic science teaching pushed cookbooks toward standardized measurements and reproducible proportions. The approach is generally credited to the Boston Cooking School tradition, and by the time this book appeared the thin/medium/thick table was common enough that a publisher could print the thick version as a bare list of quantities and a cross-reference. Underneath it all is béchamel, the French mother sauce built on a white roux, which came into English and American kitchens as plain "white sauce" or "cream sauce" and lost most of its classical trimmings on the way.