Below is a recipe I found for a cheese sauce, but it’s making me curious. Since there’s no flour involved, what exactly is holding the damn thing together? The eggs?
2 egg yolks
1/2 C. beer
2 T. butter
3 C. grated sharp Cheddar or Colby cheese
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp. dry mustard
1/2 tsp. salt
Dash of cayenne pepper
I’m planning on making a batch of sauce in the near future, but I’d feel a lot safer with a bechamel. Can this recipe be modified to include flour? Also, and I can never remember this, if the roux is hot, should the milk be cold? I seem to remember somewhere saying that they should be opposite temperature wise, but it seems to go against common sense to me-I’d think cold milk would break the sauce.
The egg yolks and butter react to form a mayonnaisey sort of sauce. The same principal is used in making Hollandaise. It works beautifully, as long as you don’t overheat or overcook the egg yolks.
Yes, the egg holds it together, but there’s a fair bit of cheese in there too; more than you would put in a bechamel-based sauce (well, more than I would anyway) - the cheese will thicken it a fair bit.
The recipe looks suspiciously like a Welsh Rarebit (or Rabbit if you’re from southern Louisiana). The eggs thicken it, but it stays together because of the cheese.
As for adding liquid to a roux, it is best to add cool liquids to a hot roux or hot liquids to a cool roux. Here’s a cite.