by EMERSON SLOANE
In the 19th century, Chef Antoine Carême set forth four base sauces as the fundamentals for all other sauces one could prepare in French cuisine. They were Allemande, Béchamel, Velouté, and Espagnole. In the 20th century, Chef Auguste Escoffier demoted Allemande to a secondary sauce of Velouté, and added Tomato and Hollandaise.
Once you've mastered these five basic "mother" sauces, you can expand your experimentation and knowledge of sauces to conquer any recipe in your kitchen. Don't be intimidated by the French names or the history of these things. As you read further, you'll recognize that you've had all of these sauces before--they're not just limited to an idea of "French cuisine."
They require a few simple ingredients--that's why they're called mother sauces--and later, with additions, they serve as the beginning point for everything to come. Who knows? Maybe sometime soon, you'll be inventing your own new sauces using these fundamental bases.
Getting these sauces to the right consistencies to maximize their flavor and how they cling to and enhance your food require techniques using a roux, emulsifier, or reduction. Are you ready?
Béchamel
Made from roux and milk or cream, you'll be familiar already with this sauce if you've had great homemade macaroni and cheese or a delicious lasagna. This is also the base for extending out to a Mornay sauce, with the addition of Parmesan. You can also make an excellent quality cheddar cheese sauce or mustard sauce from this base. Classical flavorings to add to this sauce are white onion, clove, bay leaf, salt, white pepper, and nutmeg. But, what to serve it with? Eggs, fish, steamed vegetables, pastas, veal, and poultry.
First, how to make a roux:
A roux is a 1:1 mixture of butter and flour or animal fat that is cooked together and then used to thicken sauces. Don't use margarine or shortening. They taste horrible. A good roux is like paste and is not runny or liquid enough to pour. If you get your roux wrong, it'll make your sauce greasy. The longer your roux is cooked, the runnier it will become.
Place equal parts of flour and fat into a sauce pan and cook over medium heat. For a white roux, cook just for a few minutes until the fat and flour are evenly mixed and start to froth. Use white roux for white sauces. For a blond roux, cook a little longer, until the roux starts to slightly turn in color. Use in white sauces that are stock based. A brown roux, of course, is used in brown sauces. To make a good brown roux, cook the fat and butter over low heat so that it browns evenly, but does not scorch. This roux is great for thickening brown sauces and for gravies. You'll end up experimenting with how much roux to add to your sauces to give them the consistency you desire. Begin with small amounts, stirring until the roux is incorporated and then add more as needed until you reach a good sauce consistency that you and your guests like with your foods. Now, on to the Béchamel sauce!
4 oz. of white roux
1 quart milk (whole milk is preferred)
1/4 white onion, skin peeled off
1 whole clove
1 whole bay leaf
salt, white pepper, and nutmeg to taste
Combine flour and butter in a small pan and cook over moderate heat to make your white roux. In a separate pot, heat up milk to a simmer. Add your roux to the milk, making sure both aren't too hot.
Whisk the roux and the milk together and then bring them to a simmer. Stick your bay leaf to your white onion with your whole clove and place into the simmering milk. Simmer for about 30 minutes and thin with more milk if necessary.
Season with salt, white pepper, and nutmeg to taste. The taste of the nutmeg is not what's important here so don't make it the primary flavor by any means. The purpose of the nutmeg is to add depth of flavor.
Finish the sauce by straining through a chinois.
So what else can you make with this mother sauce?
For a standard cream sauce: add 4-8 ounces of heavy cream, heated. Season with salt, white pepper, and lemon juice to taste. Add some of your favorite herbs or spices. Always strain your sauce to make it smooth.
For a Mornay sauce add 4 ounces of Gruyere cheese and 2 ounces of Parmesan, grated. Turn off your heat and add 2 ounces of butter. Strain.
For an excellent cheddar cheese sauce, add 8 ounces of cheddar cheese, grated. Add 1/2 teaspoon of dry mustard and 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce. Stir everything into your warm Béchamel until the cheese is melted.
Velouté
This sauce starts off just like Béchamel, with a white roux, but then it gets mixed with fish, veal, or chicken stock. It's not really used as a sauce on its own, but it's the beginning of a great mushroom sauce and for gravies. Serve this sauce with eggs, fish, steamed poultry, steamed vegetables, pasta, and veal.
4 ounce blond roux
1 1/4 quarts hot, White Stock (Veal, Chicken, or Fish)
Heat up your white stock in a heavy bottom sauce pan. In a separate pan, cook roux to a blond stage. Allow roux to cool slightly before adding it to the gently simmering stock.
Whisk stock and roux together and bring to a gentle simmer. Allow to simmer for about 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Adjust consistency by adding more hot stock if necessary. Recipe should yield 1 quart of sauce and the sauce should thinly coat the back of a spoon. Finish by straining through a chinois or a strainer lined with cheesecloth.
Note: Do not season your Velouté. Velouté is always used as a foundation for other secondary sauces and small sauces, at which time you will season the sauce as a whole. So, what is a secondary sauce to be made?
White Wine Sauce: 4 ounces of dry white wine, 1 quart of the Velouté sauce, 4 ounces of heavy cream, 1 ounce of butter, and salt, white pepper, and lemon juice to taste. Reduce the wine in half over heat and then add the Velouté made with fish stock. Reduce until the sauce thinly coats the back of a spoon. Temper the heavy cream and then stir it into the sauce. Right before serving, swirl in your butter and season with salt, white pepper and lemon juice before straining.
Tomato
You're probably the most familiar with this mother sauce...over pasta, on pizza, in lasagna. Classically served with pasta, fish, vegetables, polenta, veal, poultry, and dumplings, it's the starting point for some other sauces as well, like a delicious Creole sauce. Flavor with garlic, salt, pepper, sugar, mirepoix (onions, carrots, and celery at a 2:1:1 ratio), and pork. Unlike velouté, this is most definitely a stand alone sauce.
This base sauce can be made with fresh tomatoes (always my preference) cooked down into a liquid, canned tomatoes, tomato puree or tomato paste. The following is a classical tomato sauce recipe from Escoffier. Take the time. You'll appreciate the flavor.
2-3 oz Salt Pork. Salt pork comes from the belly portion of the pig, just like bacon. However, unlike bacon, salt pork is never smoked, and the fattier (more white), the better.
3 oz Carrots, peeled and medium diced
3 oz White or Yellow onion, medium diced
2 oz whole butter
2-3 oz Flour, All Purpose
5 lbs Raw, Good quality tomatoes, quartered
1 qt White Veal Stock
1 clove freshly crushed garlic
Salt and Pepper To taste
Pinch of Sugar
In his book, Escoffier calls for you to “fry the salt pork in the butter until the pork is nearly melted.” The term frying can be misleading, and what he’s really calling for you to do is to render the fat.
To render out the salt pork properly, place the salt pork in a heavy bottom saucepan with a tablespoon of water, cover with a lid, and place over medium heat. Check in about 5 minutes. The steam from the water will allow the fat to render out of the salt pork before it starts to brown or burn.
After the salt pork is nice and rendered out, add in your butter, carrots and onions, and sweat over medium heat for about 5-10 minutes, or until they become nice and tender and start to release their aromas. Sprinkle the flour over the carrots and onions and continue to cook for another few minutes. You’re essentially using the residual fat from the butter and salt pork to make a blond roux.
Add in your raw tomatoes. Roast with other ingredients until they start to soften and release some of their liquid. Add in your white veal stock and a clove of crushed garlic.
Cover the pot with a lid, and Escoffier says to put it in a moderate oven, which is about 350 degrees F or 175 C. If your sauce pot won’t fit, you can always just simmer it on your stove top. Bake in oven or simmer for 1.5-2 hours. I've always roasted my tomato sauce in the oven. I learned it from a chef almost twenty years ago.
Escoffier’s classical recipe also calls for you to pass your finished sauce through a Tamis, but if you’re looking for a smooth tomato sauce, I would instead recommend that you first blend it in a blender, and then press it through a chinois. Once you have passed your sauce through the chinois, finish by seasoning it with salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar.
Note on Sugar: The addition of sugar is used to balance the natural acidity of the tomatoes. Your tomato sauce should not taste sweet, unless you enjoy putting ketchup on your pasta.
To this sauce, you can add spices and herbs you enjoy...garlic, oregano, etc. I like to add a little olive oil for depth of flavor to finish it off. If you're not too worried about it, you can enhance the sauce with butter and heavy cream. From there, if you like ground beef in your sauce, go for it. My mom used to sauté pepperoni in a skillet and then add it to the sauce before simmering it. Delicious.
Espagnole
This is your classic brown sauce. It starts off with a beautiful thing called a mirepoix--a 2:1:1 ratio of onions, carrots, and celery and beef stock. You make this with a roux--the brown roux, so scroll back up to find out more about that at the beginning of this article. This sauce is served with roasted meats--beef, duck, lamb, and veal. And it's delicious. From this base, you can branch out to make a Bordelaise sauce and a Madeira sauce. Ready to get started?
By the way, you can serve your homemade Bordelaise with filet mignon and win the entire night. OK, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. First, the basics:
Mirepoix: 4 oz onions, 2 oz celery, 2 oz carrots
2 oz butter
2 oz flour
2 oz Tomato Puree
Sachet Containing: 1/2 Bay Leaf, 2-3 Sprigs of Fresh Thyme, 2-3 Sprigs Parsley
1.5-2 qts Roasted Veal Stock
Start by roasting your mirepoix over medium heat, in the bottom of a heavy bottom sauce pot with the butter, until the mirepoix turns a nice golden brown. Once your mirepoix has browned, add in your tomato puree and continue roasting for 2-3 more minutes.
Sprinkle in your flour, and cook until the flour is well incorporated into the other ingredients (about 5 more minutes). Add your roasted veal stock and sachet.
Bring to a simmer, and gently simmer for about 2 hours, reducing the entire sauce down to 1qt, If necessary, add more stock if too much evaporates during the cooking process. Skim sauce as needed. Tip: While simmering your sauce, pull it half way off the burner, so that all the scum will collect on one side of the pot, making it easier to skim.
Once your sauce is finished cooking, pass it through a fine chinois a couple of times to insure a smooth, consistent texture.
For that Bordelaise, take your Espagnole and then some more roasted veal stock at a ratio of equal parts and reduce it by half over heat. Then strain it through a fine mesh strainer. Then...
Add 1 cup of red wine, 2 ounces of chopped shallots, fresh cracked black pepper, 2-3 sprigs or fresh thyme, and half a bay leaf. Reduce everything by half over heat and then stir in the demi glace (that's what you made above with equal parts of the Espagnole and stock!) and simmer for about 20 minutes. Strain through a fine mesh strainer and swirl in 2 ounces of butter.
Hollandaise
I never really cared much for any Hollandaise sauce until I decided to sit down and devote myself to learning how to make it. With great quality ingredients, a Hollandaise sauce can be the perfect complement with eggs, vegetables, poultry, fish, and beef recipes. It's especially delicious on fresh steamed asparagus. It takes some practice to get this one right, I'll admit. I don't make it often, probably because of that. Be careful to temper the eggs or things will curdle. If the sauce breaks, you can fix it by adding a little heavy cream and whisking it back to life or take your curdled sauce and pass it through a mesh strainer to get rid of the curdled portions. Keep the remaining sauce warm while you add an egg yolk plus a tablespoon of warm water to the sauce in a stainless steel bowl and whisk like your life depended on it. This sauce is created through the technique of emulsification..the egg yolks act as a thickening agent. When it comes to tempering your eggs, I've found the best method is heating the yolks in a stainless steel bowl over a pot of gently simmering water to create a double boiler.
Over time, I've come to use this sauce over crab cakes--a favorite of mine from growing up on the southeastern seaboard.
1 1/4 lbs of butter, clarified (you should end up with about 1 lb of clarified butter)
1/8 teaspoon Peppercorns, crushed
1/8 teaspoon Salt, (kosher preferred)
1.5 oz White Wine Vinegar
1 oz cold water
6 Egg Yolks
1-2 tablespoons of lemon juice
Salt and Cayenne Pepper to taste
Place salt, vinegar and crushed peppercorns into a sauce pan and reduce by 2/3. Remove from heat and add water. Transfer reduction to a stainless-steel mixing bowl.
Add egg yolks and beat over a simmering pot of water until the egg yolks become thick and creamy. (If unsure about the thickness, monitor with an instant read thermometer and make sure the eggs do not exceed 150°F).
Once the egg yolks have reached the desired thickness, remove from heat. Using a ladle, slowly drizzle in the warm clarified butter, starting with just a few droplets first to get the emulsion going.
Continue streaming in the clarified butter until it is completely incorporated. If the hollandaise becomes to thick before all the butter is emulsified in, thin the hollandaise with a couple drops of warm water.
Finish by seasoning your hollandaise with salt, lemon juice and cayenne pepper to taste. Add just enough cayenne to help cut through the fat of the hollandaise and to add depth of flavor; your hollandaise should not be spicy.
Adjust final consistency with a little bit of warm water to both lighten the sauce and give it better flow.
Keep warm over a double boiler until ready to serve. The best holding temperature is about 145°F. This temperature both discourages the growth of bacteria and is hot enough to keep the fat in your hollandaise from solidifying. For both food safety and quality control, hollandaise should not be held any longer than two hours.
So, there you have it. Or...there you have them. Does it seem like too much? Maybe. But, I devote a part of every Saturday to refining techniques and recipes like these. Why do I do it? I believe, very strongly, that great food, great recipes, and nutrition are an integral part of good style. The benefits of eating well are reflected in our bodies, giving us the mental acuity and confidence we need to dress well and feel well. Additionally, the creativity of working with food and creating great things for yourself or for your family and friends invigorates the mind and gives us confidence. And, lastly, preparing foods in your own kitchen with fresh, seasonal ingredients tastes amazing--you can't deny it, once you've done it. Nothing you make on your own, with your hands and with your mind can be beat by a box or jar of something processed for you in a factory. Nothing. You can do all of this and you can do it well. You're worth the investment.
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