On Food and Cooking

black sauce, you should heat up a little fat
and brown a small spoonful of wheat flour
in the fat and after that put good wine into
it and good cherry syrup, so that it
becomes black, and sugar, ginger, pepper,
cloves and cinnamon, grapes, raisins and
finely chopped almonds. And taste it,
however it seems good to you, make it so.
— Das Kochbuch der Sabina
Welserin, 1533, transl. Valoise Armstrong
Milk-Based Sauces: Béchamel and Boiled
Sauces based on milk rather than stock are of
course much easier to make, and more
forgiving; because they’re already milky, the
cook doesn’t have to worry about long
simmering to clarify them. The classic starch-
thickened milk sauce is béchamel, whose only
other ingredients are seasonings and the butter
in which the starch is precooked for a couple
of minutes. Once the milk has been added to
the roux, the sauce is simmered for 30–60
minutes with occasional skimming of the skin