🍳 Béchamel

Béchamel is a French white sauce of a butter and flour roux, thinned with milk or cream and seasoned with ground nutmeg; it is one of the "mother sauces" of French cuisine (Wikipedia). Milk is its base: 100 g of whole milk has 3.27 g of protein, 3.2 g of fat, 4.63 g of carbohydrates and 123 mg of calcium (USDA).

It is made like this: first a roux of butter and flour is prepared, then it is heated in milk or cream and seasoned with nutmeg. The proportions depend on the recipe; Wikipedia gives no quantities.

A similar roux-based sauce appears in François Pierre de La Varenne's book "Le cuisinier françois" of 1651. The first mention under the name béchamel is found in Vincent La Chapelle's 1733 book on the culinary art. The name is thought to honor Louis de Béchameil, a 17th-century financier and honorary steward of the household of Louis XIV, but this is only a guess. The common Italian version, that Catherine de' Medici brought the sauce from Tuscany, is disputed: no Italian chefs were found among her servants in the archives.

Derived from béchamel are Mornay (with cheese), cardinal, Nantua, Breton, suprême and Soubise. It is used in Italian lasagna al forno, Catalan canelones, Greek moussaka and pastitsio, and Egyptian macarona bil-bechamel; the Greek béchamel is often enriched with egg.

Béchamel or roux? A roux is only the base: butter and flour cooked together. Béchamel is that roux thinned with milk or cream and seasoned with nutmeg, and it counts among the “mother sauces” of French cuisine. Béchamel or Mornay? Mornay is simply béchamel with cheese, one of several sauces derived from it, like cardinal, Nantua, Breton, suprême and Soubise. The proportions depend on the recipe, and the Greek version is often enriched with egg.

A ready-made béchamel is sold in jars or cartons in the sauce or pasta aisle of supermarkets and in the chilled section of delicatessens. Read the ingredients list: a classic version names milk or cream, butter, flour and nutmeg, and milk is highlighted as an allergen. Remember that the sauce is milk-based, so it contains lactose and milk proteins, whatever the pack calls it.

Why it matters to you. If a dish names béchamel, its base is milk or cream with a butter and flour roux: that means lactose and milk proteins.