Balsamella (Bechamel)

History

Artusi gives this white sauce under its Italian name, balsamella, telling the reader it is the equivalent of the French béchamel, only that the French version is more complicated. His method is a roux: a spoonful of flour and an egg-sized piece of butter cooked until the flour turns hazelnut-colored, then good milk stirred in a little at a time until the liquid thickens to a pale, milky cream. The French name honors Louis de Béchameil, a 17th-century financier who held the honorary post of chief steward to Louis XIV, though the record does not settle whether he devised the sauce or merely lent it his name. A recognizable roux-thickened milk sauce appears earlier, in La Varenne's Le cuisinier françois of 1651, while the first preparation actually called béchamel is a turbot dish in Vincent La Chapelle's The Modern Cook of 1733. Italians have long claimed the sauce as their own, as a Tuscan salsa colla carried to France by Caterina de' Medici, but the story is disputed: archival research finds no Italian cooks among her household servants, and even sympathetic accounts concede that no one really knows how it traveled. Writing in Florence with a Tuscan cook of his own, Artusi keeps the homely Italian name and folds the sauce, with a well-made meat sugo, into what he calls the foundation of fine cooking.

Ingredients

• tbsp flour
• egg-sized piece butter
• ml milk

Instructions

1. Melt a tablespoon of flour with an egg-sized piece of butter until it takes a hazelnut color.
2. Add half a liter of the best milk gradually, stirring constantly, until thickened to a milk-white cream.
3. Adjust: add milk if too stiff, or more butter-and-flour if too runny.