Where does Béchamel Sauce come from?

The origin of the Bechamel sauce is confusing, because it is attributed either to the French and Italian cuisine, although the name comes from a French chef.

This sauce has become popular for it use in the elaboration of gratin dishes made with pasta or vegetables, which could be alone or accompanied with meat or fish. Nowadays is so popular that you can find it packed in supermarket.

The recipe of this sauce hasn’t had a substantial change with the passing of the years, although the number of ingredients that you can add to empower the taste has been increasing recently.

What is the origin of Béchamel Sauce?

The invention of this sauce is attributed to the French chef of the duque Louis de Béchameil (1630-1703), although some people think that it comes from an older recipe, brought to France by the chefs of Catalina de Médici.

The changes to the original recipe come only from the last 100 years. In the recipes from several centuries ago, from XVII century, it is mentioned as a base sauce to prepare a Mornay sauce. In some of them people use different types of cheeses.

Ingredients:

• 40 g of flour.
• 40 g of butter.
• 1 L of milk.
• Salt
• Black pepper.
• Nutmeg

Time of preparation: 1 hour.

How to cook Béchamel Sauce:

First step: Preparation of the ingredients.

First of all, we are going to prepare the paste to which we have to add the milk to prepare the sauce.

For this, we are going to put the butter in a pot to melt it, we should use low heat for this.

As soon as the butter is melt, we have to add the flour and start stirring until we have a paste. The look will be like small and yellow balls, this paste is called ‘roux’.

Meanwhile we are preparing all this, we should put the milk to warm in a pot.

Top Tip: be very, very, very, very careful when you melt the butter, if you don’t stir it all the time or you put it on the fire for too long it will burn, and we will have to trash it. The same happens to the mixture with the flour, when you leave it for too long on the fire, it will take a brown colour and a burned taste that will ruin your béchamel.

Second step: Preparation of the sauce.

As soon as we have the ‘roux’ is time to prepare the sauce, for this we start putting the warmed milk into the pot with the ‘roux’.

We should add the milk little by little, and never stop stirring to avoid the lumps. Don’t add the next amount of milk until the one before is completely mixed with the rest.

You must do all this procedure with low heat because, if not, the béchamel will burn, and if you do it without any heat, the sauce won’t get the required consistency.

Top Tip: I know is a hard recipe for your arms but NEVER, and I repeat the emphasis in the NEVER, stop stirring, this recipe is simple but is really important to follow the steps exactly as I have been saying because the minimum fail will ruin your sauce.

Final step.

When you have added all the milk and you have reached the specified consistency, add the black pepper and the salt, move everything very well and preserve.

You should let the sauce rest until it is completely cold until you make anything with it, the taste and the consistency won’t be optimum until it gets completely cold as a previous step.

Fourth step: How to serve.

Although sometimes I have eaten this sauce alone, just with the spoon because the taste is amazing it is thought to be used as a sauce, so you can serve it with pasta, meat steaks, vegetables, etc.

Depending on how you prepare it, you will get different consistencies, so you can use it also alone as a cream or for fried dishes. But we are going to talk about this in the next section.

Finally, another good thing about béchamel, is that you can prepare a big quantity and preserve in the fridge or in the freezer for even 3 months! And it won’t lose the taste!

Top Tip: to preserve it in the fridge or in the freezer, be completely sure that you are covering it very well, if not, the preservation won’t be the same.

Fifth Step: types of béchamel.

Depending on the use we are going to give to the béchamel we have to prepare it in different ways, using different proportions:

• If we want it like a sauce, we will prepare it as we have explained, with 40 g of butter and 40 g of flour for each litre of milk.
• If we want it as a dish, we want more consistency for our béchamel, so the proportions will vary to 60 g of butter and 60 g of flour for each litre of milk.
• Finally, if we want to use it for fried food, to mix it with meat or fish and bread it to fry, we will need a quite dense béchamel, so the proportions will be 90 g of butter and 90 g of flour for each litre of milk.

Top Tip: the proportions will be always the same, you only variate the amount of each ingredient you have to add.