Etymology
Which duc de Mornay, if any, is honored in sauce Mornay is debated: Philippe, duc de Mornay (1549–1623), Governor of Saumur, and seigneur du Plessis-Marly, writer and diplomat, is generally the favored candidate, but a cheese sauce at his table would have to have been based on what we would term a velouté sauce, for Béchamel had not been invented. Sauce Mornay does not appear in Le cuisinier Royal, 10th edition, 1820; perhaps sauce Mornay is not older than the great Parisian restaurant of the 19th century, Le Grand Véfour in the arcades of the Palais-Royal, where sauce Mornay was introduced. In the tout-Paris of Charles X, the Mornay name was represented by two extremely stylish men, the marquis de Mornay and his brother, styled comte Charles; they figure in Lady Blessington's memoir of a stay in Paris in 1828–29, The Idler in France. They might also be considered, when an eponym is sought for sauce Mornay.
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