Sauce
In a
sauce is a thick liquid which may be used to add flavor to
food, to moisten it and/or make it look more attractive on the plate. Sauces form an important part of traditional French cuisine. These French-style sauces are thickened with starch or
roux (flour cooked in butter) and fall into two basic categories - brown sauces, which are based on demi-glace, a reduction of browned veal and beef bones, and white sauces, based on velouté, a reduction of the meat and bones of veal, chicken or both, or of fish. Also important in French cuisine are sauces in the
Béchamel family, based on flour and thickened milk, "emulsified sauces", which use eggs as
emulsifiers to combine normally immiscible ingredients such as oil and vinegar, and "butter sauces", in which butter fat is re-emulsified back to a state resembling the original
There are also many sauces based on tomato, other vegetables and various spices. Asian cooking uses an entirely different range of sauces.
Sauces can also be sweet, and used either hot or cold to accompany and garnish a dessert.
Some examples of sauces:
White Sauces
- velouté
- sauce Allemande
- mushroom sauce
- sauce Suprême
- sauce Américaine
Brown Sauces
- sauce Africaine
- Bordelaise sauce
- Bourguignonne sauce
- Chateauxbriand
- sauce Robert
Béchamel family
Emulsified sauces
Butter sauces
Sweet Sauces
Hot sauces
Asian Sauces
Other sauces
Also see:
condiment, coulis,
custard,
garum,
salsa,
ketchup,
mustard, toenjang, kochujang.
References
The Saucier's Apprentice. Sokolov, Raymond. Knopf, 1976. ISBN 0394489209
On Food and Cooking. McGee, Harold. Macmillan, 1984. ISBN 0020346212
The Curious Cook. McGee, Harold. Macmillan, 1990. ISBN 0020098104