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Cream Sauce (Heat one table-spoon butter)
Heat one table-spoon butter in a skillet, add a tea-spoon flour, and stir until perfectly smooth, then add gradually one cup of cold milk, let boil up once, season to taste with salt and pepper, and This is very nice for vegetables, omelets, fish, or sweet serve. breads.
A minimal white sauce: butter, flour, milk. The proportions here are much leaner than a modern béchamel, so expect a pouring sauce rather than a coating one.
- ThicknessOne teaspoon of flour to a cup of milk gives a barely-thickened sauce that will not cling. For a standard coating sauce, use a tablespoon of flour to the tablespoon of butter and the same cup of milk.
- Cook the roux brieflyStir the butter and flour together over moderate heat until it stops smelling raw and looks smooth, perhaps a minute. Skipping this leaves a pasty flour taste that milk will not mask.
- Cold milk, added graduallyThe instruction is deliberate. Cold liquid poured in a little at a time and whisked keeps the starch dispersed; dumping it in at once is the usual cause of lumps.
- "Let boil up once""Let boil up once" -- Bring it just to a bubble so the starch swells and thickens, then pull it off. Long boiling risks scorching the milk on the pan bottom.
- Skillet versus saucepanA wide skillet evaporates a small quantity of milk quickly and browns it at the edges. A small heavy saucepan and a whisk suit this better.
- YieldAbout one cup, enough to dress vegetables for four or to sauce two servings of fish.
- SeasoningSalt generously and finish off the heat; milk sauces taste flat when underseasoned. White pepper keeps the sauce clean-looking if that matters, and a scrape of nutmeg is traditional with vegetables.
Butter, flour and milk in this ratio is the plainest form of what French cooking calls béchamel and nineteenth-century American books simply called cream sauce or white sauce, whether or not cream appeared in it. A single all-purpose sauce recipe was expected to serve for boiled vegetables, poached fish, an omelet, or poured over sweetbreads, with the cook adjusting thickness and seasoning to the dish. The same base, enriched or flavored, underlies creamed dishes, croquette fillings and cream soups throughout collections of this period.