HERE'S HOW:
- In a sauce pan, saute a minced onion in half a pound of butter.
- Add enough flour to absorb the melted butter and onions, then cook this mixture (it's called a roux) slowly for a few minutes.
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Meanwhile, in a double boiler heat enough milk to approximate the volume of sauce you want. (Don't risk scorching the milk over an open fire.)
- When the milk is hot (stick your finger in it to find out), let the double boiler remain over low heat as you start adding the cooked roux (flour, butter and onions) to the milk a little at a time, beating the sauce with a whisk and letting it thicken a little and smooth out each time before adding more roux.
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A word of caution here: You can't make a white sauce with warm milk. A roux added to warm milk won't thicken.
- So make sure your milk is hot BEFORE you start adding roux. That way it will start thickening the milk instantly, and you can see at once how thick it's going to be.
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A roux added to warm milk will fool you into thinking you need to add more and more roux because the darn stuff won't thicken.
- You keep adding roux and nothing happens.
- Then, when the milk finally does get hot enough to let the roux do its thickening work, you end up with a big white lump, suitable for international soccer competition.
- And you'll have to add fifteen more gallons of milk trying to thin it out.
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Just be sure your milk is hot and all will be fine.
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Leftover roux is never a problem.
- It will save time tomorrow when you want to thicken a soup or make country gravy for breakfast.
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To finish the white sauce, add white pepper, salt, thyme, nutmeg and, if you like, sherry wine.
- To further amaze your friends, you may add lemon juice and mushrooms and call it Sauce Bechamel, named by the steward of Louis XIV's household, after the chef who invented it.
Here are a few suggestions for your white sauce (while it's still in the double boiler):
LOBSTER NEWBURG:
Cook some cubed lobster either by sauteing it in butter or poaching it in a small amount of water with lemon juice and white wine. Meanwhile, beat into the hot white sauce a couple of egg yolks mixed with a little cream. The egg yolk mixture makes a smoother sauce, lightening the sauce and giving it a more delicate texture. The cream protects the yolks from scrambling when they contact the hot sauce. Now, mix in some paprika to produce the pale pink color demanded in a Newburg sauce.
If you've already added mushrooms and sherry wine, the Newburg sauce is complete. If not, add the wine and mushrooms now. Next, stir in the cooked lobster (drained, if you've poached it) and taste to see if it needs salt. If the sauce seems a little thick, add some of the poaching liquid to it. The same procedure can be followed using crab, whitefish, scallops, shrimp, or any combination.
LOBSTER OMELET:
Fold the lobster Newburg inside the omelet. Finish with more sauce on top. Garnish with tiny shrimp or crab.
CROQUETTES:
Top the croquettes with an egg sauce, made simply by adding chopped hard-boiled eggs to the plain white sauce. Or, instead of using hard-boiled eggs, you can separately poach some eggs lightly in water. Leave the eggs a bit runny. Then after you drop them into the sauce, stir the sauce with a spoon just enough to break up the eggs and let the runny yolks combine gently with the sauce, giving it a pale yellow color.
MACARONI AND CHEESE:
Add cooked macaroni and chopped cheddar cheese to plain white sauce. Place the mixture in a shallow pan. Sprinkle with more grated cheddar and Parmesan cheese. Dust with paprika. Pop it into a hot oven and brown the top.
You can see how the preparation of a good white sauce eliminates the work of having to make a new sauce for every dish. Both time and work are saved this way.
In a big hotel kitchen, it would be impossible for a saute cook to quickly produce any of the dozens of different entrees from an a la carte menu if she did not have on hand in the steam table, hot and ready to go, the versatile white sauce, or Bechamel. You should do the same.
