Is "medium white sauce" a usefully distinct term?
I am familiar with a basic white sauce, or béchamel, and know how to make it. I recently came across a recipe (circa 1950's) that calls for 1 cup medium white sauce.
Is this the same as a béchamel? (What other white sauces [light/heavy? thin/thick? color?] was medium distinguishing from?) If not, do I need to adjust the "standard" white sauce recipe in some way to make it thinner or thicker?
Best Answer
After spending more time on search engines and thanks to the comment from belisarius...
Medium refers to the thickness level of the final sauce, and is controlled by the ratio of roux (butter/flour) to milk. For 1 cup of milk:
- thin = 1 tablespoon each flour/butter
- medium = 2 tablespoons each flour/butter (a "standard" bechamel)
- thick = 3 tablespoons each flour/butter
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Answer 2
I have many cookbooks dating back to the 1940's & 1950's. As far as I have been able to tell over the years, a medium white sauce would be the same as your standard recipe. If thick, thin, flavored, colored, or anything else were designated, I would delve further into it. But for all intents and purposes medium should be interchangeable with standard or regular.
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