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Bechamel Sauce
(Rich.) Blend 2 ounces of butter with 1 1/2 ounces of flour, add 1 pint of white stock (preferably chicken.), and 6 chopped mushrooms. Stir for 20 minutes, add 1/2 pint of hot cream and the juice of a lemon, strain it and cook 5 minutes longer. Plain. Chop 1 carrot, 1 piece of celery, 1 small onion, 1 bayleaf, salt, and pepper, and cook with 2 ounces of butter and 1/2 ounce of flour, stirring constantly. Add 1 pint of very rich milk and cook 10 minutes longer; strain for use. Bechamel sauce is served with chicken or delicate entrees; it has no equal for the purpose for which it was invented over a century ago. TOMATO SAUCE (used for rich entrees and braised dishes.). Cook 1 ounce of butter with 1 ounce of chopped ham, 1 onion, 1 carrot, some parsley and a bayleaf and a clove. Chop the onion and carrot. Cook for 5 minutes, then add 1/2 cup of consomme or melted beef extract, 1 cup of stewed tomatoes or 3 fresh ones, sliced, a tablespoonful of butter and flour, mixed; season to taste. Stir and cook 20 minutes, then press through a sieve. VALENCIA SAUCE (for chicken or sweetbreads.).
Chop 1 truffle, 3 mushrooms, and 3 slices of tongue, very finely; mix with 3 tablespoonfuls of boiled rice and a tablespoonful of stock. Stir and cook for 10 minutes, add 1/2 cup of stewed tomatoes and a tablespoonful of grated cheese. Cook until smooth and pour around or underneath the chicken, etc.
Four sauces run together in one entry: two versions of béchamel, a tomato sauce built on a mirepoix and ham, and a chopped garnish sauce called Valencia. The weights are trustworthy; the timings need judgement.
- Weights to volumes2 oz butter is 4 tablespoons; 1 1/2 oz flour is about 1/3 cup; 1/2 oz flour is about 2 tablespoons. If the book is American, a pint is 16 fl oz (2 cups) rather than the British 20.
- The 20 minutes of stirringThat long stir on the rich version is not idle work — it cooks out the raw flour taste and reduces the stock. Keep the heat low and the sauce barely simmering; at a boil it will catch and taste scorched. Ten to twelve minutes over moderate heat will often get you to the same place.
- Lemon juice into creamThe hinge of the rich version. Add the hot cream first, let it come back to a gentle simmer, then add the lemon juice off the direct heat and in a thin stream while stirring. Acid dumped into hot dairy that is boiling will curdle it, and no amount of straining recovers the texture.
- "Very rich milk"At the period this meant unhomogenised milk with the cream still on it. Use whole milk with a couple of tablespoons of heavy cream stirred in per cup, and scald it before it goes into the roux and vegetables.
- Straining is not optionalBoth béchamels are built with aromatics in the pan and pass through a sieve at the end. Press hard on the solids with a ladle to get the flavour out, then discard them; the carrot, celery and bay in the plain version are seasoning, not body.
- Beef extractThe tomato sauce offers "melted beef extract" as a stand-in for consommé — Bovril, Liebig's and their kin. A concentrated stock base or 1/2 cup of good beef stock does the same job; if using a paste, go light, as modern versions are much saltier.
- Valencia sauce, and what it needsAs written it is a thick chopped ragout rather than a pouring sauce, and a single tablespoon of stock will not loosen the rice and tomato. Add stock a spoonful at a time until it flows; cooked tongue can be replaced with any well-flavoured cured meat, and the truffle with a few tablespoons of finely chopped brown mushroom and a drop of truffle oil.
- YieldThe rich béchamel starts from about 3 cups of liquid and finishes with rather less after the long simmer, the plain about 2 cups, the tomato sauce about 1 1/2 cups before sieving — each enough to sauce a chicken or several portions of a delicate entrée. All three thicken as they cool; thin with hot stock or milk when reheating, and never over direct high heat.
Béchamel is generally traced to Louis de Béchameil, a financier and steward at the court of Louis XIV, though the sauce itself is often said to have been the work of the court's cooks, with the name simply an act of flattery. What the author means by "the purpose for which it was invented over a century ago" is harder to say: Béchameil died in 1703, more than two centuries before this book, so any attempt to square the phrase with him is guesswork. By 1900 béchamel had been codified as one of the French mother sauces, and any American cookbook with pretensions to continental cooking was obliged to carry it. The two versions here show how the sauce was understood at the time: the "rich" one made on white stock, closer to what a French kitchen would now call a velouté, and the "plain" one on milk alone with a mirepoix simmered in it, which is the version that survived into modern practice. The tomato and Valencia sauces that follow belong to the same table-service tradition, where a poached chicken or a plate of sweetbreads was defined less by the meat than by what was poured around it.