No. 411

Lean Bechamel with Cream

Bechamel Maigre a la Crème

Put ten ounces of butter in a saucepan with half a pound of onions cut in three-sixteenth inch squares, half a pound of carrots cut in quarter inch squares and a quarter of a pound of celery root cut the same; fry the whole on a slow fire, adding a quarter of a pound of flour. Let cook for a few minutes, then moisten with two quarts of boiled milk; stir with a spatula until boiling point; add a bunch of parsley garnished with two bay leaves and as much thyme, season with salt and whole peppers, and let cook slowly for one hour, then skim off the fat and reduce the sauce by adding to it gradually one pint of cream; strain the whole into a high saucepan through a tammy (No. 159) and keep warm in a bain-marie, setting a few pats of fresh butter on top.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A vegetable-thickened béchamel from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, built to be strained to silk and held in a water bath. Most of the work is in the straining and the holding, not the cooking.

Read the butter as a frying mediumTen ounces of butter to four ounces of flour is far past a normal roux; the extra fat is there to stew the vegetables without colouring them, and the recipe tells you to skim it off later. Expect a broad slick to rise during the hour of simmering and remove it patiently, or the finished sauce will be greasy.
Slow fire means no colourThe onion, carrot and celery root should sweat until soft and translucent. Any browning turns this into a different sauce; a béchamel maigre is meant to stay pale.
Milk must be hot going inTwo quarts of boiled milk added to a hot roux will thicken almost immediately. Add it in stages and work the spatula into the corners of the pan, since a flour sauce holding an hour over direct heat scorches on the bottom before you smell it. A heat diffuser or the lowest possible flame is worth using.
Celery rootCeleriac, not celery stalks. It is knobbly and needs peeling deeply; a quarter pound is a modest fraction of an average root, which varies a good deal in size.
Whole peppersWhole peppercorns, left in during the simmer and removed at the strainer. They perfume without clouding the sauce or leaving black specks, which matters in a white sauce.
Tammy and its substituteA tammy is a fine worsted cloth through which the sauce was forced with a wooden pestle or twisted between two people. A chinois pressed hard with a ladle gets close; a conical strainer lined with damp muslin gets closer but is slow. The vegetables should be pushed through, not discarded, since they carry much of the body and flavour.
Reduce first, then finish with creamAdd the pint of cream a little at a time to a sauce already simmering down, so the reduction continues rather than stalling. Two quarts of milk plus a pint of cream will come back to somewhere near a generous quart and a half of finished sauce, though the recipe states no yield.
Bain-marie and the butter filmThe pats of fresh butter melt into a film that stops a skin forming. Hold the sauce over hot, not boiling, water and stir the butter in only at the moment of service.

A Little History

Maigre is the old kitchen word for lean or meatless cooking, the food permitted on fast days and through Lent, and it survives in French professional vocabulary long after the religious calendar stopped governing restaurant menus. This one gets its depth from a heavy vegetable base and a long simmer, which is why it sits in the same chapter as the chicken béchamel just before it. Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's for over thirty years. The 1894 Epicurean is organised exactly this way, with a long section of foundation sauces and essences that the hundreds of later dishes simply refer to by number.