MOTHER SAUCES

                                                       MOTHER SAUCES

What Is a Mother Sauce?

French chef Marie Antoine-Carême was the first to organize all the French sauces into groups that were based on four foundational sauces. Later, French chef Auguste Escoffier added one more sauce so that there were now five "mother sauces," which he codified in recipe form in Le Guide Culinaire in 1903.

These sauces were seen as the foundations for many dishes and other sauces, and they were supposed to be known by heart by culinary students. While they are still taught in culinary schools and deemed foundational, some are used often in home cooking, while others are used more in restaurant cooking or rarely made at all anymore.

The Importance of Roux

Before we list the five sauces, we need to talk about roux. What makes a sauce a sauce? Basically, liquid needs to be thickened so that it coats and clings to food instead of running off of it. Thickening can happen by cooking down and reducing things like tomato sauce, which will naturally thicken as moisture evaporates, but other sauces need a little help.

This is where roux comes in. Roux is basically cooking fat and flour together before adding in the liquid you want thickened. The fat used is generally butter, but oil or other fats can also be used. The fat and flour cook together briefly to cook out some of the floury, pasty flavor in the flour (and in Southern cooking, roux is actually cooked until very dark to add a nutty, toasty flavor). When the liquid is added to roux and everything comes to a boil, the flour thickens the liquid and you end up with sauce.