Cream Sauce, Bechamel, Roux, or Gravy?

When I was first starting to expand my culinary skills beyond ramen noodles and spaghetti, I began incorporating a versatile white sauce (Better Homes and Gardens. New Cook Book. 1981. p.355) into several of my dishes.  This recipe essentially calls for equal parts flour and butter (1-2 TBSP each) combined with a cup of milk and salt and pepper to taste.  I'd use this for soup bases, or cheese sauce primarily, and the cookbook listed several potential variations.  Then, one day, I asked a family member for a cream gravy recipe.  That, too, turned out to be equal parts butter and flour combined with milk (can't you make glue with a similar recipe?).

Recently, I was watching a cooking program and they spoke of a bechamel sauce.  That sounded somewhat exotic, so I thought I'd incorporate it into my cooking.  Lo and behold, it was nothing more than the simple white sauce I had been using all along.

Then, I decided to experiement with some Cajun cuisine - gumbo, in particular.  Well, gumbo is all about the roux so I had to make sure I could get that right.  Do you know what roux is?  You guessed it.  Equal parts flour and butter combined with some liquid (milk, stock, water, etc.)  The only real difference I found was that you typically want to cook the flour and butter mixture a bit longer to darken it up... nobody ever heard of a good light-colored roux for gumbo.  The additional cooking does add flavor as well, so it's not entirely cosmetic.

So, whether you're into French cuisine, Cajun / Creole cuisine, or simple southern cooking, a basic mixture of flour, butter, and liquid can be a much-needed element in your cooking, regardless of how you choose to actually label it.