One of my fondest memories of cheese sauce goes back to Vermont where my children Jack and Katie were born. Sunday was pasta day—where freshly cooked homemade noodles were topped with a simple cheese sauce made with fresh, natural, unsalted butter, a small amount of the pasta water and freshly grated Parmesan and Pecorino Romano cheese. We could smell the aroma of the cheese as it melted into the hot pasta, and see and taste the creamy butter and cheese turn into this effortless, yet perfect, sauce.
This imagery contrasts with early versions of sauce that, it is said, were used to disguise the taste of food, particularly spoiled food. I’m happy to report, though, that’s no longer the case. Today, chefs use sauces to add flavor, texture and color to foods. Sauces enhance and complement what we eat.
So, if sauce was originally used to hide the taste of foods, when did it morph into its new role as a flavorful cheese sauce? We can trace most sauces we currently use back to five basic, or “mother,” sauces that evolved in Europe beginning in the late 1600s: béchamel, velouté, espagnole, tomato and egg-based emulsions such as hollandaise and mayonnaise. These sauces have survived so long because they are very adaptable, and they provide a foundation for a considerable number of other sauces, including cheese sauces. For instance, béchamel and velouté can easily carry cheese thanks to their existing dairy components and roux—cheese fits into the body of these sauces.
Béchamel sauce, also called white sauce, is thought to have been created for Louis XIV by his personal chef, Pierre de la Varenne, and the recipe can be traced back as far as 1680. Béchamel sauce was made with scalded milk thickened with flour and butter. Later, adding hard Gruyère and Parmesan would create the French Mornay sauce, and—voilà—the cheese sauce was born. Some may argue whether this was actually the first cheese sauce, but, if not the first, it definitely ranks among the most famous, along with its counterpart Alfredo. The latter is a modern version of the basic Italian staple of Parmigiano-Reggiano, butter and garlic that was used to flavor freshly cooked pasta.
Indispensable aspects
Fast-forward to today, and cheese sauces are some of the most-valued and versatile food ingredients in a chef’s repertoire. They add flavor, texture and color, and are a great medium to expand flavors. Cheese sauces are also the perfect foundation for new and exciting flavors, not only because of the cheese itself, but also because of the ingredients paired with the cheese.
The possibilities when making cheese sauce are endless, as long as you are lucky enough to be able to explore all the fantastic cheeses that are available, and you understand culinary cheese-sauce basics:
• Always use good, high-quality cheeses for sauces—cheap natural-cheese imitations can turn sauces grainy and lumpy and may not melt properly (processed cheese melts smoothly, but often lacks the flavor and character of natural cheese);
• If the cheese is too young, the curd (protein) may not be sufficiently broken down and can make the sauce stringy;
• Always add the cheese toward the end of cooking to capture flavors and to keep the sauce’s emulsion from breaking;