1 Sauce 3 Meals

Stir flour into melted butter

I’m sure that you all know what a white sauce is, Right? If not there are many recipes on the Internet to show you how to make a roux. My mom was a master of white sauce. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I ever heard it called Béchamel sauce. It is also one of the five Mother sauces in cooking. How did my Mom know that it was a Mother sauce. Since we’re talking about retro food on this blog, I will refer to it as white sauce. There are three thickness’s of white sauce; they are thin, medium, and thick. Mom made hers somewhere between medium and thick.  

Add milk to roux

So what did she do with this magical white sauce? Her white sauce trio consisted of Chipped Beef on Toast (SOS), Chicken a la King, and finally Eggs a la Goldenrod. I don’t know her motivation for serving this but during the 50’s and 60’s it was filling, hot, and affordable.

Chop Beef

Add beef to sauce

Add Leseur peas

Mix beef and peas into white sauce

Serve SOS on toast

My Dad was not a big fan of Chipped Beef on Toast. He said that when he was in the Army WWII they ate a lot of it. They only knew it by the name “Shit on a shingle,” or SOS. It was not a meal that he would call comfort food. We all liked it and we were on a budget.   

Moms Chipped Beef on Toast

6          T.                  Butter

6          T.                  Flour

3-1/2    C.                 Milk

4          pkg.              Corned Beef (Budig brand)

1          8.5 oz. can   Peas (drained, Leseur)

to taste             Salt and pepper

8          pcs.              Toast or English Muffin*

NOTE: *As we grew older and Mom was expanding her culinary universe, she discovered Puff Pastry Cups (Pepperidge Farm brand). We never had SOS on toast again. 

DIRECTIONS

You may use toast, English muffins, or pastry cups. Prepare puff pastry cups according to package directions. To make the sauce, in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux. Continue stirring until the roux bubbles. Stir for 1 minute more and remove the pan from the heat. Continue stirring as you add in about 1 cup of milk. Return the pan to the heat and stir in the remaining milk. Continue cooking until sauce thickens. Chop the beef into squares about 1/2” by 1/2”. Drain peas and stir the beef and the peas into the white sauce. Bring this mixture to a hot serving temperature while stirring often.

To serve, remove the center round from the pastry cup and set to the side. Place the cups on serving plates and fill each with the beef and pea mixture until it is sliding down the outside of the pastry cup. Place the pastry circle on the top and enjoy. This recipe is good to fill 8 cups and will serve four people 2 cups each, or 8 if serving 1 per person as a course. ENJOY!  

NOTE: The remaining two recipes using white sauce was my Moms “Chicken a la King and Eggs a la Goldenrod. Keep checking back for those two recipes.   

Chicken a la King

Eggs a la Goldenrod

© TMelle 1998-2011