Do Millennials Eat White Sauce?

Yes! Yes they do eat white sauce and sometimes even make it, but possibly they do not know they are eating "white sauce." It's just that it's not often referred to as "white sauce." Now days it is much cooler to refer to white sauce as "bechamel."

No, I am not picking on the Millennials, so save the cards and letters... as Oprah use to say. The facts are it was discovered that Millennials, or members of Generation Y, are less likely to strongly identify with the generational terms when compared to Generation X or to the Baby Boomers. 

For the most part Baby Boomers were of the "white sauce" era due to the convenient cookbooks such as the popular Betty Crocker’s 1956 Picture Cook Book. While Julia Child tried her best to sway our parents, and even the Baby Boomers with her two-volume French cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, published in 1961 (Volume 1) and 1970 (Volume 2). It took Julia at least 30 good years to get us to pay attention that French cooking could be just as simple as most recipes in our American cookbooks. 

The basic recipe: 

2. 
   
3. 2 tablespoons butter
4. 2 tablespoons flour
5. 1 1/4 cups milk, heated
6. Salt
7. Freshly ground pepper
8. And sometimes a hint of nutmeg. 
9. 
   

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Stir in the flour and cook, stirring constantly, until the paste cooks and bubbles a bit, but don't let it brown — about 2 minutes. This step is basically making what is referred to as a "roux." (Often in Cajun cooking, the roux is cooked longer until it is the desired brown color)

Add the warm milk, continuing to stir as the sauce thickens. Bring it to a boil. Add salt and pepper to taste, lower the heat, and cook, stirring for 2 to 3 minutes more. Remove from the heat. You can also add more milk to thin the sauce, if needed. 

There you go! You have your basic bechamel which now can be used or other ingredients can be added to it - - such as cheese! 

In fact, speaking of white sauce and Betty Crocker, the 1950's housewife often made white sauce. My mother made white sauce to "enhance" the top of salmon patties. These little fish patties were made exactly the same as crab cakes, but with canned or leftover salmon. Like who had leftover salmon hanging around? Fresh salmon wasn't all that available at the time, especially if you lived in the middle of a farming town. My folks had many friends and co-workers who would visit Alaska for salmon fishing. They often brought back their catch canned at the local fish canneries. They would drop by a can or two. Sometimes peas were put into the sauce. And speaking of white sauce and peas, who remembers in the spring eating "new potatoes and peas in white sauce?"

My dad made white sauce for the beloved SOS in our household. SOS was a white sauce with chipped beef in it and served on a piece of toast or biscuit. Dad would shake his head at us kids with every bite we put into our mouths. He would always say, "If that is all you had to eat for days, you probably wouldn't enjoy it like you do now." Oh, and the meaning of SOS? "Shit on a Shingle" was the term used in the armed forces. 

One of the more "elegant" uses for white sauce was a favorite among my mother and her "young housewives" club luncheons - - Eggs ala Goldenrod over fresh asparagus. Think of it as a vegetarian version of Eggs Benedict, but with asparagus and bechamel sauce instead of hollandaise. Mom often cut the crust off of the toast to make it look "fancier." Eggs ala Goldenrod was the perfect way to use up those hard-boiled eggs during Easter brunch, especially if asparagus was in season. Frankly, I would crumble bacon on top. 

Giving bechamel (aka white sauce) a lot of thought, it is the tasty base for many popular and even international foods that we enjoy today. It's the base for gourmet mac and cheese, and if it isn't topped over croque monsieur or croque madame, then you would have ordinary ham and cheese sandwiches.  Bechamel is  the glue that holds potato and vegetable gratins together, and between the layers of Greek moussaka or Italian baked rigatoni. Chicken pot pie isn't a good pot pie without bechamel. It's the base of all good creamy or cheesy soups like broccoli, or even clam chowder. Chile con queso gets some added creaminess for dipping with the start of a good white sauce - - aka bechamel. 

It's also a regional thing when you consider good ol' biscuits and sausage gravy. That specialty gravy starts with a flour and butter roux. Would it be referred to as a white sauce since it originated in the south? Whether you refer to it as bechamel or white sauce, it is just as delicious.