Mornay

Nobody can settle whether the sauce honors a French village or a Huguenot diplomat.

One account points to the commune of Mornay in Saône-et-Loire. Another names Philippe de Mornay, the Protestant writer and governor of Saumur who died in 1623, but béchamel, the base of the sauce, did not exist in his lifetime, which weakens the claim. The sauce as cooks know it shows up in French kitchens only in the nineteenth century.