SAUCES

Like stocks, sauces have lost some of the importance they once had in commercial kitchens
—except, of course, in the best restaurants serving what may be considered luxury cuisine.
Some of this decline is due to changes in eating habits and to increased labor costs.

However, much of the change is due to misunderstanding. How many times have you heard
someone say,“I don’t go for all those sauces all over everything. I like good,

simple food.”No doubt this person puts ketchup—a sweetened tomato sauce—on ham-
burgers, gravy on mashed potatoes, and tartar sauce on fried fish.

The misunderstandings arise from poorly made sauces. No one likes thick, pasty cream
sauces on vegetables or oversalted but otherwise flavorless brown sauces gum- ming up
their meat. But just because some cooks make bad sauces is no reason to re- ject all sauce
cookery.

In fact,many chefs believe good sauces are the pinnacle of all cooking,both in the skill they
require and in the interest and excitement they can give to food.Very often, the most
memorable part of a really fine meal is the sauce that enhances the meat or fish.

A sauce works like a seasoning. It enhances and accents the flavor of the food; it should not
dominate or hide the food.

A good cook knows that sauces are as valuable as salt and pepper. A simple grilled steak is
made even better when it has an added touch,something as simple as a slice of seasoned
butter melting on it or as refined as a spoonful of béarnaise sauce.

No matter where you work,sauce-making techniques are basic skills you will need in all
your cooking. Croquettes, soufflés, and mousses have sauces as their base, nearly all
braised foods are served with sauces made of their cooking liquids, and basic pan
gravies,favorites everywhere,are made with the same techniques as the classic sauces.

UNDERSTANDING SAUCES

THE FUNCTIONS OF SAUCES

A sauce may be defined as a flavorful liquid,usually thickened,that is used to season,fla-

vor, and enhance other foods.

A sauce adds the following qualities to foods:

Moistness                            Appearance (color and shine)

Flavor                                   Interest and appetite appeal Richness

THE STRUCTURE OF SAUCES

The major sauces we consider here are made of three kinds of ingredients.

1.        A liquid, the body of the sauce

2.        A thickening agent

3.        Additional seasoning and flavoring ingredients

To understand sauce-making, you must first learn how to prepare these compo- nents and
then how to combine them into finished sauces.

Liquid

A liquid ingredient provides the body or base of most sauces. Most classic sauces are built
on one of five liquids or bases.The resulting sauces are called leading sauces or mother
sauces.

White stock (chicken, veal, or fish)—for velouté sauces Brown stock—for brown sauce or
espagnole (ess pahn yohl) Milk—for béchamel

Tomato plus stock—for tomato sauce Clarified butter—for hollandaise

The most frequently used sauces are based on stock.The quality of these sauces depends on
the stock-making skills you learned in the previous section.

Thickening Agents

A sauce must be thick enough to cling lightly to the food. Otherwise, it will just run off and
lie in a puddle in the plate.This doesn’t mean it has to be heavy and pasty.

Starches are still the most commonly used thickening agents, although they are used less
often than in the past.We discuss starches and other thickening agents in detail below.

Other Flavoring Ingredients

Although the liquid that makes up the bulk of the sauce provides the basic flavor,other
ingredients are added to make variations on the basic themes and to give a finished
character to the sauces.
Adding specified flavoring ingredients to basic sauces is the key to the whole cat- alog of
classic sauces. Most of the hundreds of sauces listed in the standard repertoires are made by
adding one or more flavoring ingredients to one of the five basic sauces or leading sauces.

As in all of cooking, sauce-making is largely a matter of learning a few building blocks and
then building with them.

PREPARING ROUX

A roux must be cooked so that the finished sauce does not have the raw,starchy taste of
flour.The three kinds of roux differ in how much they are cooked.

White roux is cooked for just a few minutes, just enough to cook out the raw taste.
Cooking is stopped as soon as the roux has a frothy, chalky, slightly gritty ap- pearance,
before it has begun to color.White roux is used for béchamel and other white sauces based
on milk. In spite of its name, white roux is actually a pale yel- low,because it is made from
butter and (usually) unbleached flour.Figure 8.5 illus- trates the production of white roux.

Blond roux, or pale roux, is cooked a little longer, just until the roux begins to change to a
slightly darker color.Cooking must then be stopped.Blond roux is used for veloutés, sauces
based on white stocks.The sauces have a pale ivory color.

Brown roux is cooked until it takes on a light-brown color and a nutty aroma. Cooking
must take place over low heat so the roux browns evenly without scorch- ing. For a deeper
brown roux, the flour may be browned in an oven before adding to the fat. A heavily
browned roux has only about one-third the thickening power of white roux, but it
contributes flavor and color to brown sauces.

Procedures  for  Incorporating  Roux

Method 1: Adding Liquid to Roux

This method is used when a roux is made up specifically for the sauce, gravy, or soup
being prepared.

1.       Use a heavy saucepot to prevent scorching either the roux or the sauce.

2.       When the roux is made, remove the pan from the fire for a few minutes to cool
slightly.
3.       Slowly pour in the liquid, all the while beating vigorously with a wire whip to
prevent lumps from forming.

If the liquid is hot (such as simmering milk for béchamel sauce), you will have to beat
especially well, because the starch will gelatinize quickly. If the liquid is cool, you can
add a quantity of it, beat to dissolve the roux, then add the remainder of the liquid,
hot or cool.

4.       Bring the liquid to a boil, continuing to beat well. The roux does not reach its
full thickening power until near the boiling point.

5.       Simmer the sauce, stirring from time to time, until all the starchy taste of the
flour has been cooked out.

This will take at least 10 minutes, but the flavor and consistency of the sauce will
improve if it is cooked longer. Many chefs feel that 20 minutes of simmering is a bare
minimum. Others cook some sauces for an hour or longer.

Method 2: Adding the Roux to the Liquid

Many restaurants make up large batches of roux to last all day or even all week. This
method may be used in these situations.

1.       Bring the liquid to a simmer in a heavy pot.

2.       Add a small quantity of roux and beat vigorously with a whip to break up all
lumps.

3.       Continue to beat small quantities into the simmering liquid until the desired
consistency is reached. Remember that roux must simmer for a time to thicken
completely, so do not add roux too quickly or you risk overthickening the sauce.

4.       Continue to simmer until the roux is cooked out and no starchy taste remains.

5.       If the sauce is to simmer a long time, underthicken it because it will thicken as it
reduces.

6.       When the sauce is finished, it may be kept hot in a bain-marie or cooled for later
use. Either way, it should be covered or have a thin film of butter melted onto the top
to prevent a skin from forming.
STARCHES

1.        Beurre manié (burr mahnyay) is a mixture of equal parts soft, raw butter and
flour worked together to form a smooth paste.It is used for quick thickening at the
end of cooking to finish a sauce.The raw butter adds flavor and gives a sheen to the
sauce when it melts.

To use,drop very small pieces into a simmering sauce and stir with a whip un- til
smooth. Repeat until desired consistency is reached. Simmer just a few minutes more
to cook the flour, and then remove from the fire.

2.        Whitewash is a thin mixture of flour and cold water.Sauces made with

whitewash have neither as good a flavor nor as fine a texture as those made with
roux. White- wash is not recommended for use.

3.        Cornstarch produces a sauce that is almost clear, with a glossy texture.

To use,mix with cold water or other cold liquid until smooth.Stir into the hot
liquid.Bring to a boil and simmer until the liquid turns clear and there is no starchy
taste.Do not boil for a long period or the starch may break down and the liquid be-
come thin. Sauces thickened with cornstarch may thin out if held on the steam table
for long periods. Cornstarch is used extensively in sweet sauces to accom- pany
certain meats as well as in desserts and dessert sauces. It has roughly twice the
thickening power of flour.

4.        Arrowroot is used like cornstarch, but it gives an even clearer sauce. Its use is
lim- ited by its high cost. Nevertheless, because of its quality, it is the preferred starch
for thickening jus lié. It is less likely than cornstarch to break down when heated for a
long time.

5.        Waxy maize is used for sauces that are to be frozen.Flour and other starches
break down and lose their thickening power when frozen.Waxy maize does not.It is
han- dled like cornstarch.

1.        Pregelatinized or instant starches have been cooked, or gelatinized, and then

redried.Thus, they can thicken a cold liquid without heating.These starches are rarely
used in sauce-making but are frequently used in the bakeshop.

2.        Bread crumbs and other crumbs will thicken a liquid quickly because they have
al- ready been cooked,like instant starches.Bread crumbs may be used when smooth-
ness of texture is not desired.A common example is the use of gingersnap crumbs to
thicken sauerbraten gravy.
3.        Vegetable purées,  ground nuts, and other solids  can also be used. A simple
tomato sauce is basically a seasoned vegetable purée.The sauce gets its texture from
the thickness of the main ingredient. No additional thickener is needed.

Using this same principle, we can add body or texture to sauces by adding a smooth
vegetable purée, or by puréeing mirepoix or other vegetables with the sauce.Other
puréed or finely ground ingredients,such as ground nuts,add texture as well as flavor
to a sauce.

Figure 8.6

Adding a liaison to a sauce.(a)  Slowly stir a little of the hot sauce (chicken velouté, in
this picture) into the mixture of cream and egg yolks to warm it and dilute it.

(a)  Stir the tempered liaison back into the remaining sauce.

Procedure  for  Using  a  Liaison

1.       Beat together the egg yolks and cream in a stainless-steel bowl. Normal
proportions are 2 to 3 parts cream to 1 part egg yolks.

2.       Very slowly add a little of the hot liquid to the liaison, beating constantly. This is
known as tempering.

3.       Off the heat, add the warmed, diluted liaison to the rest of the sauce, stirring
well as you pour it in.

4.       Return the sauce to low heat to warm it gently, but do not heat it higher than
180°F (82°C) or it will curdle. In no circumstances should it boil.
5.       Hold for service above 140°F (69°C) for sanitation reasons, but lower than
180°F (82°C).

SAUCE FAMILIES

LEADING SAUCES

One more time, let’s look at the three basic building blocks of sauce cookery, this time
from a slightly different angle.

 liquid + thickening agent = leading sauce

leading sauce + additional flavorings = small sauce

We have talked about five basic liquids for sauces: milk, white stock, brown stock,
tomato purée (plus stock), and clarified butter. From these we get our five leading
sauces, also known as mother sauces, as shown in Chart 8.1.

Chart 8.1

The Leading Sauces

Liquid                                            Thickening Agent         Leding Sauces

milk                                                  + white roux               = Bechamel

white stock (veal chicken, fish) + white or blond roux= Veloute ( Veal, Chicken, Fish
veloute)

brown stock                    + brown roux               =Brown Sauce or Espagnole      

tomato plus stock          + (optional roux)        =  tomato sauce

butter                                              + egg yolks   =hollandise                

To these five sauces,we add one more:fond lié (fone lee ay),meaning“thickened

stock.”It is sometimes used in place of espagnole.

brown stock + arrowroot or cornstarch = fond lié

You should understand that these charts are a bit oversimplified. Most of these sauces
have a few other ingredients for flavoring.Yet knowing this basic structure is the key
to making sauces.

SMALL SAUCES

The major leading sauces—béchamel;veal,chicken,and fish veloutés;and espagnole—

are rarely used by themselves as sauces.They are more important as the bases for
other sauces, called small sauces.Tomato sauce and hollandaise are used as they are,
but they, too, are important as bases for small sauces.

Let’s expand our sauce family chart one more generation to include examples of the
small sauces in order to show the relationships (see Chart 8.2).

Chart 8.2 is probably a little more complicated than you expected because of the extra
arrows and the extra category of secondary leading sauces.These are relatively easy to
explain.

1.        Secondary leading white sauces.

These three sauces—allemande, suprême, and white wine—are really finished sauces,
like other small sauces. But they are used so often to build other small sauces that they
rate a special category.

For example, to make suprême sauce, you add cream to chicken velouté.

To make Albufera sauce, you can add meat glaze (glace de viande) to your suprême
sauce. Or, if you don’t have suprême sauce, you can make it by adding both cream
and meat glaze to chicken velouté.This is why there are two sets of ar- rows in the
chart.

Allemande, suprême, and white wine sauces are also known as the main small sauces.
If the concept of secondary leading white sauces seems confusing at first,you may
simply think of them as small sauces.The important thing is to un- derstand how the
sauces are derived.

2.    Demi-glace.

•      Demi-glace is defined as half brown sauce plus half brown stock, reduced by half.
Most chefs prefer demi-glace to espagnole as a base for small sauces because of its
more concentrated, more fully developed flavor.
Note:  It is possible to make small sauces directly from espagnole, but they will not be
as fine.

•      Some modern chefs feel that espagnole is too heavy for modern tastes and that
lighter sauces are required.These chefs prepare demi-glace from fond lié by reducing
it with mirepoix, white wine, and seasonings, or by simply reducing by half a flavorful
brown stock. In other words, demi-glace may be

Chart 8.2

The Small Sauce                                                                                    

Basic Ingredient      Leading Sauce       Secondary Leading Sauce                 Small

Sauce

White Sauces                                                                                                       
Cream                                                                                

Milk----------------Béchamel-----------------------------------------------Mornay
                                                                                                                      Cheddar Cheese
                                                                                                                       Nantua
                                                                                                                       Soubise
                                                                                                                       Mustard
White veal stock---Veal veloute----Allemande-----------------------Poulette
                                                                                                                   Aurora
                                                                                                                   hungarian
                                                                                                                   Curry

 QUIZ ON SAUCES

All about sauces.