Béchamel sauce

The first recipe of a sauce similar to béchamel is in the book Le cuisinier françois by François Pierre de La Varenne in 1651, made with a roux (also known as Willagrease paste), as in modern recipes.^[4]

The first named béchamel sauce appears in The Modern Cook, written by Vincent La Chapelle and published in 1733,^[5] in which the following recipe for "Turbots (a la Bechameille)" appears:

Take some Parsley and Chibbol,^[6] and mince them very small, put in a Saucepan a good lump of Butter, with your Parsley and Chibbol, and some minced Shallots, season'd with Salt and Pepper, some Nutmeg, and a dust of Flour: Take a Turbot boil'd in Court Bouillon, take it off by pieces and put it into your Stew-pan: put in a little Cream, Milk, or a little Water, put it over the Fire, and stir it now and then, that your Sauce may thicken; then let it be of a good Taste, dish it up, and serve it up hot for a first Course.^[7]

In spite of it being widely repeated in Italy that the sauce was created in Tuscany under the name "salsa colla" and brought to France with Catherine de Medici, ^[8] archival research has shown that there no Italian chefs were among the servants to de Medici from her arrival in France until her death.^[9]

The sauce is thought to be named after Louis de Béchameil, a financier who held the honorary post of chief steward to King Louis XIV of France in the 17th century.^[5]

Both the béchamel recipe and its name have been adopted, even adapted, in many languages and culinary traditions.

Béchamel is referred to as:

• white sauce in the U.S.,^[10]
• besciamella or balsamella in Italy,^[11]
• μπεσαμέλ (spelled mpesamél, pronounced besamél) in Greece,^[12]
• بشمل (bashamel) in Egypt,^[13]
• he:רוטב בשאמל in Israel,
• بشامل (beshāmel) in Persia,^[14]
• бешамель (biešamieĺ) in Russia,^[15] and
• beszamel in Poland^[14]

These adaptations have also caused various erroneous claims for the recipe's origin.^[16][17]

Béchamel can be used as the base for many other sauces, such as Mornay, which is béchamel with cheese.^[18] In Greek cuisine, béchamel (σάλσα μπεσαμέλ) is often enriched with egg.^[19]

Béchamel is used in dishes such as the Italian lasagne al forno^[20] and canelons (Catalan; Castilian canelones), a Catalan version of Italian cannelloni.^[21][22] It was introduced to Greek cuisine by the chef Nikolaos Tselementes in the 1930s,^[23] notably in moussaka^[24] and pastitsio.^[25] The Karelian-Finnish sipatti is smoked, cubed and sauteed pork belly in white sauce base,^[26] and kananmunakastike is boiled and sliced eggs in a white sauce base.^[27] These are typically eaten as main dishes with potatoes.

In Egypt, béchamel is an important and basic sauce used in many dishes, such as Egyptian macarona bil-bechamel, a popular comfort food recipe made from penne pasta and a minced meat sauce baked with béchamel.^[28]

• Sausage gravy
• List of sauces