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Thin White Sauce
2 tablespoons butter 1½ tablespoons flour 1 cup scalded milk ¼ teaspoon salt Few grains pepper Put butter in saucepan, stir until melted and bubbling; add flour mixed with seasonings, and stir until thoroughly blended; then pour on gradually while stirring constantly the milk, bring to the boiling-point and let boil two minutes. If a wire whisk is used, all the milk may be added at once.
A basic béchamel from Fannie Farmer's school, thinned for pouring over fish and boiled meats. The whole thing takes under ten minutes once the milk is hot.
- The salt quantityThe salt reads as a whole number where a fraction belongs; for one cup of milk a quarter teaspoon is the likely intended figure. Season to taste at the end rather than trusting the figure as printed.
- Scalded milkHeat the milk to just below a simmer, until it steams and bubbles ring the edge of the pan. Warm milk blends into the roux without lumping and shortens the time on the heat; the original does not say why it calls for scalded milk.
- Cook the roux, but keep it paleButter and flour should bubble together for about a minute so the raw starch taste cooks off. For a white sauce it must not take on color, so keep the heat moderate.
- The two-minute boilFlour-thickened sauce needs to reach a full boil to thicken properly and lose its pastiness. Two minutes at a bare boil, stirring, is correct; longer over high heat will scorch the milk solids on the pan bottom.
- The whisk noteThe remark about adding all the milk at once is sound. A wire whisk disperses the liquid faster than lumps can form, and the gradual pour is only insurance for someone working with a wooden spoon.
- Proportions and gradesThis is the thin grade: roughly one and a half tablespoons of flour per cup of milk. Thicker grades in the same series use proportionally more flour, so the same method scales for creamed dishes and croquette binding.
- YieldAbout one cup, enough to sauce four modest portions of fish or vegetables. It thickens as it cools; loosen with a spoonful of hot milk if it stands.
White sauce is the plainest descendant of the French b"chamel, and by the time Fannie Farmer set it down in the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book in 1896 it was widely used in American domestic cookery — the base for creamed chicken, scalloped oysters, croquettes and countless vegetable dishes. The graded scheme often associated with Farmer sorts the sauce by the ratio of flour to milk, thin, medium and thick, so that a cook could learn one technique and produce a predictable result for any purpose, though such gradings predate her and are most fully laid out in later editions. That insistence on level, standardized measurement is what the book is remembered for, and a sauce built on fixed proportions is about as clear a demonstration of the principle as the period offers.