The Five Classic French Sauces

Some people have asked me to explain what I meant by "the five classical sauces", so that's what this blog post is about. No new recipes. Sorry folks.

There are five sauces in classical French cuisine that form the basis of literally hundreds of derivative sauces. As an example, your basic cheese sauce is actually called Mornay Sauce, and is a direct descendent of the first of the so-called Mother Sauces.

So here they are in order:

1. Bechamel Sauce. Bechamel is your standard white sauce. It's ingredients are milk, butter, flour, salt, white pepper and nutmeg. A very basic recipe that yields one cup of sauce is: 1 1/2 c. cold milk, 2 Tbsp each flour and butter, a pinch of nutmeg and salt and white pepper to taste. I have perfected a method for making this sauce, which I'll write about in a future blog post.

2. Veloute Sauce. There are few variations of this, but generally speaking, a veloute is formed from white stock (of some kind), and roux (equal amounts of flour and butter used as a thickening agent); salt and pepper to taste. You can use white stock (made from a combination of chicken and veal bones), chicken stock and fish stock.

3. Espagnole Sauce. This is a sauce that is derived from beef stock. The idea is to cook stock with mirepoix (2 parts onion, 1 part carrot, 1 part celery), roux, and tomato puree (most chefs use something called tomato concasse; I'll write about that in another post). I'm sure everybody's heard of demi glace: it's a concentrated beef stock preparation that is used in port/madiera wine reductions and lots of other sauces. It's made by reducing Espagnole Sauce and beef stock in equal parts with bouquet  garni until reduced by half.

4. Hollandaise Sauce. This sauce is fantastic by itself (think eggs benedict), but it is also the basis for bearnaise sauce, which is a much more tangy and flavorful derivative.

5. Tomato Sauce. Our "Sunday Gravy" recipe is a Southern Italian version of this classic sauce. There's no wrong way to make this, so whatever recipe you have for tomato sauce will do. Nota bene: Plain marinara is not a replacement for Tomato Sauce.

So why is this important? Because almost anything you know (or would like to know) about sauces boils down to a derivative of one of these five basic sauces. It's well worth the time learning how these are made, as it will only improve your comfort with making delicious sauces to accompany your meals. There are some very basic versions here (take with a grain of salt; none of my recipes are exactly like this; you'll see an immediate difference between my bechamel and the recipe on the site linked above).

More on basics later.

Happy cooking.

~David

Postscript: I am not a professionally trained chef (well, almost not). I started cooking when I was 15 years old, when I worked at Lotito's Deli in Ramsey, NJ. From there, I trained in prep. chef duties at J. T.'s Place and then, I trained with a Cordon Bleu-trained chef (Johan Tennyson) at Johann's Oaks in Mahwah, NJ. This guy, Johan, was the real deal. He trained at CB and then cooked his way from England through Europe, down through parts of Africa and South Africa, and then America. I learned more about cooking in a year from this guy than from all of my experience since then combined. My training was completely classical; almost as good as having attended CB myself (almost). Fantastic experience and pedigree of which I'm very proud.