Béchamel Sauce

Béchamel sauce

Alternative names	White sauce
Type	Sauce
Place of origin	France
Main ingredients	Butter, flour, milk
Variations	Mornay sauce, cardinal sauce, Nantua sauce, Breton sauce, suprême sauce, soubise sauce
Cookbook: Béchamel sauce   Media: Béchamel sauce

This sauce is made from a white roux (butter and flour) and milk, seasoned with ground nutmeg.

 

The first recipe of a sauce similar to béchamel is in the book Le cuisinier françois by François Pierre de La Varenne in 1651, made with a roux, as in modern recipes. The name of the sauce was given in honour of Louis de Béchameil, a financier who held the honorary post of chief steward to King Louis XIV of France in the 17th century.

The first named béchamel sauce appears in The Modern Cook, written by Vincent La Chapelle and published in 1733, in which the following recipe for "Turbots (a la Bechameille)" appears:

Take some Parsley and Chibbol, and mince them very small, put in a Saucepan a good lump of Butter, with your Parsley and Chibbol, and some minced Shallots, season'd with Salt and Pepper, some Nutmeg, and a dust of Flour: Take a Turbot boil'd in Court Bouillon, take it off by pieces and put it into your Stew-pan: put in a little Cream, Milk, or a little Water, put it over the Fire, and stir it now and then, that your Sauce may thicken; then let it be of a good Taste, dish it up, and serve it up hot for a first Course.

There are many legends regarding the origin of béchamel sauce. For example, it was said to have been created in Tuscany under the name "salsa colla" and brought to France with Catherine de Medici, but this sauce was totally different from modern béchamel, and archival research has shown that "in the list of service people who had dealt with Catherine de Medici, since her arrival in France and until her death, there were absolutely no Italian chefs." Both the béchamel recipe and its name have been adopted, even adapted, in many languages and culinary traditions.

Béchamel is referred to as:

• besciamella in Italy,
• μπεσαμέλ (spelled mpesamél, pronounced besamél) in Greece,
• بشمل (bashamel) in Egypt,
• бешамель (biešamieĺ) in Russia, and
• beszamel in Poland,

However, it is often just called "white sauce" in the U.S.

These adaptations have also caused various erroneous claims for the recipe's origin.

Béchamel can be used as the base for many other sauces, such as Mornay, which is béchamel with cheese. In Greek cuisine, béchamel (σάλσα μπεσαμέλ) is often enriched with egg.

Béchamel is used in dishes such as the Italian lasagne al forno and canelons (Catalan; Castilian canelones), a Catalan version of Italian cannelloni. Its use was introduced to Greek cuisine, notably for moussaka and pastitsio, by the chef Nikolaos Tselementes.

• List of sauces