Béchamel sauce


Béchamel sauce, also known as white sauce, is a sauce that originated in Italy, later introduced to France, made from a white roux and milk.
Known as Salasa Colla in 14th century Tuscany, it has been considered, since the seventeenth century, one of the mother sauces of French cuisine. It is used as the base for other sauces. One typically finds the sauce in a lasagne, between the pasta sheets and above the upper pasta sheets.

Origin

The Italian origin of the sauce is Tuscany, specifically Florence. The sauce is a mainstay sauce of the Italian cuisine, particularly Emilian and Tuscan sub-cuisines whose ingredients remain butter, flour, milk and nutmeg. It is used in dishes such as Lasagne al Forno and Crespelle alla Fiorentina.
Louis de Béchamel, Marquis de Nointel, was a financier who held the honorary post of chief steward to King Louis XIV of France. The earliest mention of the name appears in Cuisinier François, the foundation of French cooking published in 1651 by François Pierre La Varenne.
The sauce originally was a veal velouté, with a large amount of cream added.
A recipe published in 1749 gave a modern and a traditional version of béchamel. The traditional one was made by melting butter in a pan, and then frying the peels of onions and root vegetables, green onions, and parsley in it; after cooking, cream was added, along with salt, coarse ground black pepper, and nutmeg. This was boiled, strained, and served with extra butter.
The more modern recipe was to fry minced shallot, parsley, and green onion in butter, adding cream, salt, coarse ground black pepper, and nutmeg, as before, but then to add additional parsley and serve without straining. A 1750 recipe for turbot involved cooking the fish in broth, cooling it, and then reheating it in béchamel immediately before serving.