If you’re looking for something saucy, you can’t go far wrong with a classic béchamel – the name alone evokes prestige and a touch of class, even if no one can pronounce it correctly! Known as one of the four original ‘mother sauces’, béchamel is a winner in its own right and provides a foundation for numerous other creamy concoctions. Everything hinges on the sauce in French cuisine, and a good béchamel will deliver the perfect finishing touch.
It all started in the early 1800s with French chef, Marie-Antoine Carême, considered the ‘king of cooks and cook of kings’. Carême himself established haute cuisine, where cooking became an art form rather than just a chore. As a side note, he also invented the archetypal chef’s hat that distinguished the chef from one side of the kitchen to the other. Each pleat in the tall toque denotes a particular skill the chef has mastered – but that’s a story for another day.
Back to Carême. He organised the traditional French sauces into four groups that he deemed ‘mother sauces’. These were béchamel, velouté, espagnole and allemande.
But first, what constitutes a sauce? A sauce, by definition, is a cooking liquid that has a thickening agent added. Gravy is a sauce; a vinaigrette is not. To make a spectacular sauce, we need to start with a roux.’ This is a 50/50 mixture of flour and cooking fat, stirred and briefly cooked together.
When the liquid is added to the roux, and everything comes to a boil, the flour thickens the liquid as it is stirred, and you end up with a glossy and luscious sauce.
As a mother sauce, béchamel is among the most versatile. Milk is whisked into a roux of flour and butter and simmered gently. Cloves, an onion and a bay leaf are included in the mixture, along with a touch of nutmeg, and stirred until the sauce is creamy and velvety smooth. The chef’s trick is to use the cloves to tack the bay leaf to the onion, making everything easy to remove before serving.
Once you’ve attained a flawless béchamel, the opportunities for creating even more delicious sauces are almost endless. Add a touch of tomato purée, and you’ve got aurora sauce. With grated gruyere stirred in until melted, it becomes the iconic mornay. Does your steak need the finishing touch of a soubise? Throw some sautéed onions into your béchamel, and voilà ! Perfection on a plate!
This silky béchamel sauce, once perfected, opens the door to true haute cuisine, cooking at its best.
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