Béchamel sauce ( ) is one of the "mother sauces" of French cuisine.

This sauce is traditionally made from a white roux (butter and flour in a 1:1 mixture by weight) and milk, with ground nutmeg added to enhance the flavor.

Origin

The first recipe of a sauce similar to béchamel is in the book  by François Pierre de La Varenne in 1651, made with a roux, as in modern recipes. The name of the sauce was given in honour of Louis de Béchameil, a financier who held the honorary post of chief steward to King Louis XIV of France in the 17th century.

The first named béchamel sauce appears in The Modern Cook, written by Vincent La Chapelle and published in 1733, in which the following recipe for "Turbots (a la Bechameille)" appears:

Adaptations
There are many legends regarding the origin of béchamel sauce. For example, it was said to have been created in Tuscany under the name "salsa colla" and brought to France with Catherine de Medici, but this sauce was totally different from modern béchamel, and archival research has shown that, "in the list of service people who had dealt with Catherine de Medici, since her arrival in France and until her death, there were absolutely no Italian chefs." Both the béchamel recipe and its name have been adopted, even adapted, in many languages and culinary traditions. Bechamel is called besciamella in Italy, Μπεσαμέλ (besamél) in Greece, البشاميل (bashamil) in Egypt, Бешамель (biešamieĺ) in Russia, and beszamel in Poland, though often just "white sauce" in the U.S. These adaptations have also caused various erroneous claims for the recipe's origin.

Uses
Béchamel can be used as the base for many other sauces, such as Mornay, which is béchamel with cheese, or as is in dishes such as the Italian lasagne al forno, the Greek moussaka and pastitsio, and canelons (Catalan; Castilian canelones), a Catalan version of Italian cannelloni.

See also

 List of sauces

References

External links

 Free Culinary School Video Episode 11—An educational podcast episode that talks about the classical French technique used for making Sauce Béchamel and a few secondary sauces including Mornay, Basic Cream, Cheddar Cheese and Mustard Sauce.
 

French sauces
Italian sauces
Mother sauces
White sauces