This week I just happened to walk by a book that caught my eye entitled Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making by James Peterson. At first I thought that I would learn a brief overview of sauces and/or the making of sauces and be done with it. But when I opened the book the first chapter I opened to was chapter 6: White Sauces for Meat and Vegetables. Ah, white sauce, I know about white sauce, it's what Maggie makes first when she makes her amazing home made mac and cheese. White sauce is what my mom taught me to make so that I could make pea soup once upon a time. So I decided to learn specifically about white sauce. This is what I learned. A white sauce is simply and traditionally milk thickened with a white roux and is called sauce béchamel. A roux is "equal parts flour and butter cooked to varying degrees." To make it I was always taught to melt the butter and and the flour while stirring. Then after you have heated the roux sufficiently (there is no more flour taste) you slowly add the milk while stirring. According the Mr. Peterson you must simmer the milk for a few minutes and then add the milk slowly to the roux. He then notes that for the all-at-once-cold-milk approach (the method I was taught) you should "be sure to whisk the sauce vigorously to prevent lumps from forming" while adding the milk. One thing that I can't wait to try is adding onion to the sauce. By first sweating (this is when you cook the vegetable slowly in butter without browning it) the onions and then adding flour this is supposed to produce a flavorful white sauce. The author also talked about adding nutmeg and cheese (adding cheese to the white sauce is exactly what Maggie does for her mac and cheese and is called sauce mornay. Mr. Peterson also gives a beautiful description of what a white sauce can be for your food:

Much of the appeal of sauce béchamel comes, paradoxically, from its lack of flavor, and like a rest in music or a simple expanse on a canvas, it provides a backdrop for the flavor and texture of the other ingredients.

In the end it was fun to read a little about white sauce and to learn a little more about what goes into making sauces. I read only five pages of the 500 page book on sauce making. I conclude that sauce making is a complicated art, and only a small part of what professional chiefs have to learn and know. Amazing. UPDATE: I made a white sauce casserole for dinner tonight. I tried the sauce with the onion sweating method. I then made it pretty thick (probably too think).  I then added a can of green beans, a can of tuna, and a few bits of cauliflower I found in the freezer in an opened beg (and some noodles). Well, the cauliflower ended up being freezer burned and made the bits around it kind of disgusting. The other bits of it were edible, but not very good. Auretta ate a little and I ate a little, but I won't be taking the leftovers for lunch tomorrow. I guess reading about sauces doesn't make you a professional. But I knew that. :D