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White Sauce II
2 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons flour 1 cup milk ¼ teaspoon salt Few grains pepper Make same as Thin White Sauce.
Thick White Sauce (for Cutlets and Croquets) 2½ tablespoons butter 1/4 cup corn-starch or 1/3 cup flour 1 cup milk ¼ teaspoon salt Few grains pepper Make same as Thin White Sauce.
Velouté Sauce 2 tablespoons butter 1 cup White Stock 2 tablespoons flour ¼ teaspoon salt Few grains pepper Make same as Thin White Sauce.
A set of roux-and-milk sauces graded by thickness, all built the same way: melt the butter, stir in the flour off a fierce heat, then add the liquid gradually and cook until it thickens and loses its raw-flour taste.
- The salt quantityThe printed "14 teaspoon salt" is a broken fraction for a quarter teaspoon. That is the correct proportion for a cup of milk in all three sauces.
- Ratios at a glanceFor one cup of liquid, the medium sauce here is 2 tablespoons butter to 3 tablespoons flour, and the thick version for binding croquettes is 2½ tablespoons butter to 1/3 cup flour (about 5 tablespoons); the thin sauce's proportions are given elsewhere in the book, not on this page. Cornstarch is used at about three-quarters the volume of flour (1/4 cup against 1/3 cup) because it thickens harder.
- Method the book assumesMelt the butter, stir in the flour and cook a minute or two without colouring, then add the milk gradually, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil and hold it there a minute; a flour sauce does not reach full thickness until it boils.
- Cornstarch behaves differentlyA cornstarch-thickened sauce sets much firmer as it cools and turns glossy rather than opaque. It also breaks down if held at a hard boil for long, so cook it just to thickening.
- Thick sauce for croquettesThe thickest version is a binder rather than a sauce to pour. Mix it with the chopped meat or fish, spread the mixture on a plate and chill it thoroughly before shaping, or the croquettes will not hold.
- Velouté and the white stockWhite stock means an unroasted veal or chicken stock. Modern low-sodium chicken stock stands in; check the seasoning at the end, since commercial stock is saltier than a homemade one.
- LumpsAdding cold milk to a hot roux off the heat, whisking, then returning it to the burner is the most reliable route. A sauce that has gone lumpy can be pushed through a sieve.
- YieldEach makes about one cup, enough to sauce four servings of fish or vegetables, or to bind about two cups of chopped meat in the thick version.
Fannie Farmer's white sauces are a tidy American schoolroom version of the French béchamel and velouté, sauces that long predate the nineteenth century but that Carême is credited with organising into a system of leading sauces: the same roux, the same two liquids, but arranged as a graduated table so a cooking-school pupil could learn one method and vary a single number. That table-based approach is part of what made the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book influential, and the grades covered here — thin for cream soups, medium for creamed dishes, thick for binding croquettes, and velouté on stock instead of milk — covered much of what a turn-of-the-century American kitchen needed from a sauce.