this is an old family tradition we use the basic White Sauce:

3 cups milk
3 Tlb flour
3 tlb sugar
2 tlb butter
pinch of salt
vanilla (splash?)

and make a thick yummy Christmas White sauce that we pour WARM over plum pudding!

My Grandmother’s notes indicate you are to start with 2.5 cups of homo milk in a double boiler and add flour sugar and salt.
Stir constantly to boiling point and add butter.
5-10 mins later JUST before serving add the remaining .5 cup of milk

Server warm on Christmas over thick DARK plumb pudding!

Enjoy!

Nice

Thanks for the great addition!

Thanks for the question. True, I don’t use cornstarch for white sauce, but I will in some applications where I don’t want to add a lot of heat. Cornstarch does not require the heat of a full boil to fully activate the gluten. In fact, its starch behaves quite differently. If I were to make a white sauce with cornstarch, I would approach it the same way, but work more quickly and at lower temperatures. This is just a guess based on how I have seen it react in other applications; if you try it, I hope you’ll tell me the results! In fact, I may just try it myself to satisfy my curiosity!

The amount of nutmeg is really personal. I honestly don’t measure it, but I would expect that half a teaspoon would be about the most I would expect that I use.

As to the amount that 3 tablespoons each of butter and flour will make, it will depend on how much milk you add, and the thickness of your sauce. I have found that I will typically add at least 4 to 6 times the volume of milk as the amount of butter and flour combined. The flour and butter will combine to make an amount a little less than the total of the separate volumes; say about 5 tablespoons total. This is because of the differing particle sizes, much like adding a cup of sand to a cup of marbles — it won’t equal two cups, since the sand fills the gaps between the marbles. Anyway, adding 4 times the 5 tablespoons would give you about a cup and a half of sauce, given that you would be adding a cup and a quarter of milk. Again, this is an estimate; results can vary, as moisture in the air can radically affect how much moisure flour will absorb. but you can be safe in expecting anywhere from 1.25 cups to 1.75 cups for normal thickness of sauce.

Just a question re: this white sauce recipe. I know you said you don’t like cornflour/corn starch, but if you were using it here would you use it in the same way as the standard flour?

ta.