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The 5 French Mother Sauces, Explained
Created in the 1800s by chef Auguste Escoffier, french mother sauces serve as a foundation for any number of secondary sauce variations. Each mother sauce is categorized by its unique base and thickener.
Classical French cuisine has been extraordinarily influential in the culinary world.
Even if you don't fancy yourself a chef, you've probably incorporated elements of classical French cooking into your home kitchen on more than one occasion.
French cuisine is renowned for its liberal use of flavorful sauces. After all, a well-crafted sauce adds moisture, richness, complexity, and color to almost any dish.
There are countless varieties of French sauces, the majority of which are derived from one of five mother sauces.
Escoffier originally designated 4 primary mother sauces, along with mayonnaise as a cold mother sauce and Hollandaise as a "daughter" sauce. When his book was translated to English, mayonnaise was left out and Hollandaise was listed as a mother sauce.
This article highlights the 5 French mother sauces, explaining how they're made, their basic nutrient information, and some secondary sauces you can make from them.
Béchamel, or white sauce, is a simple milk-based sauce made from butter, flour, and whole milk.
A 2-ounce (60-mL) serving provides approximately (1, 2, 3):
To make béchamel, start by cooking butter and flour in a saucepan until it forms a thick, paste-like substance called a roux. The roux is responsible for thickening the sauce.
There are many styles of roux, but the one used for béchamel is called white roux. It's only cooked for about 2–3 minutes — long enough to remove the starchy texture of the flour but not so long that the butter begins to brown.
When the roux is ready, slowly whisk in warm milk and simmer it until it forms a smooth, creamy sauce.
With the addition of a few extra seasonings like salt, pepper, and cloves, béchamel is complete — though it may be used as a base for many other sauces.
Popular sauces made from béchamel include:
Béchamel and its derivative sauces can be used in countless dishes, including casseroles, creamy soups, and pastas.
summary
Béchamel is a rich, white sauce made from flour, butter, and milk. It's often used to create classic cream-based sauces.
A velouté is a simple sauce made from butter, flour, and stock.
Stock is a savory, flavorful cooking liquid created by simmering bones, herbs, and aromatic vegetables for several hours.
Velouté is similar to béchamel because it's a white sauce thickened with roux, but it features stock for the base instead of milk. Chicken stock is the most common choice, but you can also use other white stocks, such as those made from veal or fish.
A 2-ounce (60-mL) serving of chicken velouté contains approximately (1, 2, 4):
To make velouté, start by making a white roux with butter and flour. Next, slowly stir in warm stock and let it simmer until a creamy, light sauce forms.
A basic velouté can be used by itself on meats and vegetables, or fashioned into numerous secondary sauces.
Some popular sauces derived from velouté include:
Although it's not traditional, you can also make vegetarian velouté using vegetable stock.
summary
Velouté is made with butter, flour, and either chicken, veal, or fish stock. This sauce and its derivatives are very versatile and usually served as a gravy over meats or vegetables.
Espagnole, otherwise known as brown sauce, is a rich, dark sauce made from roux-thickened stock, puréed tomatoes, and mirepoix — a mix of sautéed carrots, onions, and celery that's used as a base.
Like velouté, espagnole uses roux and stock as the main ingredients. However, instead of white roux and stock, it calls for brown stock and brown roux.
Brown stock is made from beef or veal bones that have been roasted and simmered, while brown roux is flour and butter that's cooked just long enough to brown the butter. These ingredients give espagnole an especially rich, complex flavor.
A 2-ounce (60-mL) serving of espagnole offers (1, 2, 5, 6, 7):
Espagnole also serves as a base for the following sauces:
Because espagnole and its derivative sauces tend to be heavy and thick, they're usually served alongside dark meats like beef or duck.
summary
Espagnole is a basic brown sauce made from brown roux, brown stock, puréed tomatoes, and mirepoix. Its rich, complex flavor pairs well with dark meats, such as beef and duck.
Hollandaise is a tangy, creamy sauce made from butter, lemon juice, and raw egg yolks.
It's probably best known for its role in the classic breakfast dish Eggs Benedict.
Hollandaise stands out from the other French mother sauces because it relies on the emulsification — or mixing — of egg yolks and butter in place of roux.
It has a reputation for being somewhat challenging to prepare because of the tendency for butter and egg yolks to resist combining — much like water and oil.
The key to making a proper hollandaise is slightly warm egg yolks, room temperature butter, and steady, constant whisking. It's essential to add the butter to the yolks slowly and incrementally so that the ingredients remain stable and don't separate.
A 2-ounce serving of hollandaise provides (8):
Hollandaise is delicious on its own but also kickstarts other sauces, such as:
Hollandaise and its derivative sauces are often served over eggs, vegetables, or lighter meats like poultry and fish.
It's worth mentioning that hollandaise is derived from mayonnaise and hasn't always been classified as a mother sauce.
summary
Hollandaise combines egg yolks, butter, and lemon juice. Both it and its derivative sauces are popularly served over eggs, vegetables, fish, or chicken.
Tomato sauce is arguably the most popular of the French mother sauces.
Classical French tomato sauce is thickened with roux and seasoned with pork, herbs, and aromatic vegetables. However, most modern tomato sauces primarily consist of puréed tomatoes seasoned with herbs and reduced into a rich, flavorful sauce.
A 2-ounce (60-mL) serving of tomato sauce contains (9):
Its derivative sauces include:
Tomato sauces are remarkably versatile and can be served with stewed or roasted meats, fish, vegetables, eggs, and pasta dishes.
Any chef will tell you the best tomato sauces are made with fresh, vine ripened tomatoes. Try making a big batch of sauce with fresh tomatoes while they're in season, then can or freeze the leftovers so you can enjoy homemade tomato sauce year round.
Summary
Classical French tomato sauces are thickened with roux and flavored with pork, whereas modern ones usually consist of puréed tomatoes reduced into a thick, rich sauce.
How to compare the saucesNow that you know the difference between the five sauces, here's an infographic for easy reference.
The five French mother sauces are béchamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise, and tomato.
Developed in the 19th century by French chef Auguste Escoffier, mother sauces serve as a starting point for a variety of delicious sauces used to complement countless dishes, including veggies, fish, meat, casseroles, and pastas.
If you're looking to fine-tune your culinary skills, try cooking up one of these delectable sauces and see where it takes you.
These Sauces Are Mother, You Listen To Them
A good sauce is key to an exceptional meal. It can save a bland dish, moisten dry meats, or star as the main event (creamy mac and cheese, full stop). Having a few simple sauces up your sleeve and on your meals is a great way to upgrade your average weekly dinners. You just have to know where to start.
Avail yourself of the five basic sauces known as "the mother sauces". These baseline recipes allow you to riff indefinitely, and create well-matched sauces for any flavor profile. Each sauce only requires a few ingredients, and the method is nearly the same every time. Once you've mastered the basics, you'll be ready to put your own spin on sauce, for meals that make you say "That's mother."
BéchamelThe first time ate béchamel was after making a hundred ham and cheese croissants slathered in the stuff. It looked so darn pasty, I wondered how it could possibly improve anything. Then I sampled the breakfast sandwich and became utterly bewitched with béchamel.
Béchamel is a simple, creamy, white sauce with a light, savory flavor. Four out of five of these mother sauces begin with a roux, and this is one of them. (Read here to refresh your roux technique.) Since this is a white sauce, the fat and flour don't need to brown or develop a deep flavor. For about 2 cups of béchamel, use 2 tablespoons of butter, 3 tablespoons of flour, and 2 cups of milk. Stir the butter and flour in a saucepan for a couple minutes to cook the flour, then add warm, whole milk. Whisk until smooth and thickened. Stir in a pinch of nutmeg, and I always add a dash of salt because I can't be stopped. You can use milk with lower fat percentages, or non-dairy milk, but the texture will suffer, so consider yourself warned.
You can slather béchamel onto sandwiches, layer into veggie lasagnas, substitute it in for red sauce and make a pizza bianca, or spoon onto a baked potato. Add cheese and you've got the perfect base for a mac and cheese that will make you want to leave all this and run away to live in a cottage, just you and mac and cheese forever. I like to add chopped onion to the earliest stage of my blonde roux, and make a lazy version of soubise.
VeloutéIt's possible Thanksgiving has already familiarized you with velouté. This roux-based sauce starts out the same way as béchamel—with a roux. Instead of adding milk, you whisk in a light-colored stock, like chicken, veal, fish, vegetable, or turkey. For those who don't enjoy turkey gravy thickened with cornstarch, you might consider a turkey velouté in November.
For about two cups of velouté use the same measurements as béchamel and substitute stock for the milk measurement. Add the flour and fat (ghee works well) to a saucepan. You can take the mixture a little darker this time, but not too dark. Save that for later. Cooking the roux eliminates the pasty flour taste and intensifies the color, while the flavor becomes more toasted and complex. Cook it until it's golden, or a tinge brown, then whisk in hot or warm stock. Heating up the liquid first makes incorporation easier, as the fat doesn't seize up and form clumps. Drizzle over meats, vegetables, or casseroles. For extra credit, flavor your velouté with chopped herbs or spices.
EspagnoleIf a velouté isn't bold enough for you, espagnole is the intensified roux-based sauce you might be searching for. It's also called "brown sauce" ("espagnole" certainly has more panache, but you pick), and is made with a dark roux, and a dark stock, like beef or veal stock. It takes an extra five to ten minutes to give the flour a deeply toasted, rich chestnut color, but it's worth it. Use ghee or clarified butter to avoid any bitter flavors from the milk solids possibly burning. Aside from the richer roux, espagnole sauce gets a bigger boost of flavor from other fun ingredients like tomato purée, a mirepoix, white wine, and a bouquet garni of parsley, thyme and bayleaf, which add sweet, earthy, and savory flavors and aroma.
Using the same roux measurements as our other two sauces, you'll chop a 1/4 cup each of carrots, celery, and onion for your mirepoix. Add butter to a saucepan and add the mirepoix. Sweat the vegetables until softened and translucent. Add the flour and cook until the roux becomes deeply browned. This will look like a clumpy mess, that's okay, it will sort out later. Whisk in 2 tablespoons of tomato paste or 1 cup of puréed tomato. Add 1/2 cup of white wine and slowly add 3 cups of warmed, brown stock and whisk. Add the bouquet garni. (This can be three or four sprigs each of thyme and parsley, and a bay leaf, but it's open to adjustment.) Simmer for 30-40 minutes to thicken slightly. Strain the sauce. Drizzle over roasted meats, or serve alongside a hot sandwich as a dip. More ingredients lend well to more spin-off sauces, but the most common is a demi-glace which is espagnole cooked down. Simply return the finished sauce to a pot to further intensify and thicken. Expand on the basic espagnole with other vegetables like mushrooms, or shallots, and get sassy with spices like dry mustard or cumin. You can even mix up the booze component and switch out white wine for red, try brandy, or maybe sherry.
What do you think so far? TomatoTurns out there's more than one way to sauce a tomato. Italian style tomato sauce is a staple, but try the French style and enjoy a velvety consistency and earthy flavors. Between you and me, I think espagnole is really a grandmother sauce, because this mama here is basically espagnole with the addition of salt-cured pork and a pile of tomatoes. Salt-cured pork gets added to the butter to cook down, and this simple step dramatically changes the sauce by adding salt and umami.
Besides preparing 1/3 cup of chopped salt-cured pork–like bacon, pancetta, or lardons–and opening 2 28-ounce cans of crushed tomatoes, all of the other measurements (for the mirepoix, roux, stock, and bouquet) stay the same as the espagnole recipe above. Melt two tablespoons of butter in a pot and add the chopped salt-cured pork, like bacon, pancetta, or lardons. Cook until the pork has shed its fat and has developed a golden brown color. Add the mirepoix and cook until softened. Add the flour and cook until you have a medium brown roux. Add the brown stock, crushed tomatoes and bouquet garni of herbs. Put the sauce into the oven and allow it to cook down slowly, about an hour to 90 minutes, until thick. Pull out the bouquet garni and blend the sauce until smooth. Serve with pasta or meats. This sauce can add a subtle twist to classic Italian dishes that use red sauce. Tweak your sauce tomate with ingredients like garlic, bell peppers, or olive oil.
HollandaiseWe've come to it. The mother sauce that doesn't bother with a roux for thickening. Hollandaise is the silky, rich, and tangy sauce that drapes lovingly over your eggs benedict. Since roux has no business here, hollandaise is thickened with egg yolks. Its primary ingredients are butter, lemon juice, and egg yolks, making it similar to another famous sauce: mayonnaise.
Hollandaise is tricky because it's an emulsion, and the eggs must be cooked gently. Some recipes add a bit of water to the yolks to loosen them up and give you a little breathing room as the water evaporates. Use a double boiler, or set up a pot with an inch of water to simmer over medium low heat. Use a bowl larger than the top of the pot, and and add 4 egg yolks, 1 tablespoon of water (if using), and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. Place the bowl on the pot of water and whisk consistently with vigor. Once the heat builds and the eggs begin cooking, you'll notice the mixture thicken. Remove it from the heat and slowly incorporate 1 stick (8 tablespoons) of just melted, or extremely softened butter, a bit at a time. Season with a dash of salt, pepper, and cayenne. Spoon over eggs, asparagus, chicken, or any blanched vegetable. Riff on your hollandaise by adding chopped herbs, finely chopped shallots, or garlic. For a subtle switch up, swap out the lemon juice for another citrus like orange, lime or grapefruit.
These five mother sauces are a great baseline to start experimenting with the creamy component of your dishes. Trying to remember them all might be a long shot, but generally, you can start with a roux, pick milk or stock, and start getting creative from there.
Get Cooking: Mother Sauces — For Mother's Day, Of Course
If you turn to the section on "sauce" in the great French dictionary or bible of classic French cuisine, "Larousse Gastronomique" (Crown, 1988), there's a chart midway through the account, just before the wee recipes that make the entities in the Larousse so distinctive, that lists which sauce the French consider best with, say, eggs or poultry or vegetables.
The number of sauces runs into the hundreds: "Albufera, allemande, aurore, avocado, banquiere, bretonne, chervil, Chantilly, chaud-froid (white), Chivry, cream, curry …" — and that's merely the ABCs for the 29 sauces recommended for (merely) "poached or shallow-fried" poultry. (There are even more sauces recommended for braised, sauteed, roast or grilled poultry, not to mention separate sauce suggestions for duck and goose.)
And if you thought a country "that has 365 cheeses is ungovernable," as de Gaulle was rumored to have said (but, in truth, didn't), try one with 1,000 sauces.
Mon Dieu.
In the 1800s, Antonin Careme, along with Auguste Escoffier, one of the two revered pillars of "grande cuisine," tried to govern this burgeoning broth of sauces by categorizing them into what came to be called the five (or six — no one could agree to put a lid on it!) "Mother Sauces."
Some, we are familiar with: mayonnaise, hollandaise, bechamel.
Amy Brothers, The Denver Post
Larousse Gastronomique, a recipe book filed with ideas for which sauces should be used with different foods. Denver Post food columnist, Bill St. John makes mother sauces on May 2, 2017, in Denver Colorado.But the idea was that the mother sauces gave birth to sauces in their likeness. For example, bearnaise was a progeny of hollandaise; Mornay sauce, of bechamel (simply, bechamel with cheese).
Few hew today to these basic categories that we inherited from Careme and Escoffier, although students of the culinary arts in the Western hemisphere still learn some of them in their curriculum.
But the idea is a good and helpful one: that a simple sauce is delivered of another slightly less simple sauce (except for flavorful twists or additions), or a sauce of very close approximation, or a sauce that swipes Mom's cool idea and runs with it.
However, we live, even in the West's kitchens, much beyond France. Apart from the classic French mother sauces, there is a world of other sauces, from many non-French countries.
Here are some modern "mom's sauces," including, to my way of tasting still a winner, the traditional hollandaise.
HollandaiseHollandaise is one of the great mother sauces, but is so often avoided because it is thought that it is tedious and difficult to make. The result, both too often and too sadly, are cooks' purchases of prepackaged — or worse, canned or jarred — hollandaise sauces. "Just add melted butter," the package might say.
Avoid made-ahead hollandaise and prepare your own with this foolproof method. It's easy and quick and results in a creamy, silken sauce to use on grilled, roasted or steamed asparagus — perfect for this time of year — or on eggs Benedict, another dish avoided by the home cook because they are thought too difficult to prepare. Not so, especially this way.
(Well-appreciated in the United States with grilled steaks, bearnaise sauce is merely hollandaise to which a reduction of white wine and/or wine vinegar, minced shallots and tarragon leaves has been added.)
Foolproof Hollandaise SauceFrom J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, "The Food Lab"; makes about 1 cup
Ingredients
Directions
Add the egg yolks, lemon juice and hot water into a blender or food processor and blend on medium until smooth, about 10 seconds. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium-low heat until butter just begins to bubble and registers between 180-190F on an instant-read thermometer.
With the blender running on medium speed, slowly drizzle in the butter over the course of 1 minute, stopping to scrape down the sides of the blender if necessary, leaving behind the thin layer of whitish solids in the bottom of the pan (discard them). The sauce should be smooth, with the consistency of thick cream. Season with the pepper and salt.
Transfer to a serving container or small saucepan, cover and keep in a warm spot not directly over heat) until ready to serve.
A RouxAt its most basic, a roux (pronounced "roo" and spelled "roux" in both its singular and plural forms) is a very old technique that blends equal measures of a fat (usually but not always butter) and flour. The flour particles expand in the presence of moisture and thicken (first, if present in the fat — yay, butter — then in whatever liquid is chosen as the sauce's underlying flavor: meat broth, milk, wine, and the like.
The change in color of a roux depends on how long it is cooked, from a few minutes (blond) to as long as 20-45 minutes (from brown to very dark or even black).
Blond roux is basis for other well-known "mother sauces" such as bechamel (made with milk or light cream and used in both French and Italian cooking); veloute or white sauce (made with chicken or fish stock and used throughout Western cooking as the basis for chowders or lighter sauces); with milk or stock and cheese (known as "sauce Mornay," for a preparation of, say, mac' 'n' cheese); or as the basis of many Cajun dishes such as etouffee.
Seasonings for light roux and its sauces include herbs or spices such as thyme, nutmeg or red chili flakes; salt and pepper (white pepper is better here than black).
Brown roux is a base for sauces for dishes such as chicken pot pie or beef gravy or preparations of stews such beef burgundy (boeuf bourgignon in French); and as the basis for Cajun dishes such as gumbo.
Seasonings for darker roux include herbs or spices such as herbes de Provence, bay leaf or red chili flakes; salt and freshly ground black pepper.
The terms "blond" and "brown" indicate merely a spectrum of color for the final roux, from very light sandy color, to tawny, on to the color of peanut butter, then caramel, then to the hue of the top of flan or creme brulee, finishing with a chocolate-brown, that itself can range from milk to dark chocolate color.
Because the depth of color of roux is due to the length of time it is cooked, lighter roux often use butter as the cooking fat (because it will not discolor or darken quickly), and the darker roux, vegetable oil or clarified butter because of their higher smoke point over the heat of the stove.
Blond rouxCyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post
Step by step detail of the flour and butter to make a white roux to thicken the gravy as Tom Ryan who started Smashburger and Tom's Urban 24 prepares his Thanksgiving classics at his home on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2013 at his Denver home.Makes a scant cup of roux, enough as base for 7-8 cups total sauce
Ingredients
Directions
In non-reactive pan, melt butter. When foam subsides, whisk in flour. Continue whisking for 5-7 minutes or until the roux is a light, sandy color. Use this roux in additional sauces (white sauce, bechamel, Mornay, chicken stock veloute, etc).
BechamelTo every 1/2 cup of blond or white roux add:
When the roux is just made, whisk in the heated milk or cream 1 cup at a time, whisking non-stop until sauce is smooth. (The first cup added may sputter and spit, so use caution.) Bring to slow boil, cook, stirring constantly and slowly, for about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and season to taste with salt and nutmeg. Use forthwith or continue as base for other sauce. Recipe may be doubled easily.
Mornay (cheese sauce)To every 4 cups bechamel, melt in 1 pound (about 4 cups) grated cheese(s), American cheddar especially or other soft, moisture-rich cheese. Gruyere, comte, and swiss also work. Drier cheeses such as parmigiano-reggiano are fine but should not be the exclusive cheese, but rather added to moister cheeses.
Brown rouxMakes a scant cup of roux, enough as base for 7-8 cups total sauce
Ingredients
Directions
In non-reactive pan, melt butter. When foam subsides, whisk in flour. Continue whisking for up to 20-30 minutes on a very slow flame until the roux goes from a light tawny to the color of peanut butter or dark chocolate (depending on its eventual use).
Sauces based in seeds, grains, nuts or breadThis just in: Rivers of sauces from around the world are not constructed of cream and butter. What a concept.
One large group is sauces thickened not with flour, but with ground seeds, or grains, or nuts, or bread crumbs.
Examples include sauces such as pesto (Italy, Liguria, thickened with pine nuts); hummus (Middle East, a thick "sauce" made of chickpeas); and molé (Central America, a sauce ranging in color from yellow to light green, through a series of reds to black, thickened with seeds such as those from sunflower or pumpkin).
A well known sauce thickened with any of several nuts — piñons, almonds or filberts (and, often enough, with the addition of bread crumbs) is romesco sauce, from the Catalan name meaning "Roman' and a specialty of northeastern Spain or Tarragona, where it is served with fish.
It is a pungent mix of roasted red peppers, chili pepper, ground-up nuts and bread, and olive oil. Serve it with grilled fish this summer, or use it as a dip for vegetables or pita chips or as a topping for a Spanish version of bruschetta.
From Karen Adler and Judith Fertig, "The Gardener and the Grill" (Running Press, 2012)
Ingredients
Directions
In a food processor, grind the almonds. Add roasted peppers, garlic, bread, parsley and hot pepper flakes. Blend until it becomes a paste. Add the vinegar and pulse to blend. With the motor running, gradually pour the olive oil through the feed tube in a steady stream until the mixture thickens like mayonnaise. Season to taste with salt and black pepper.
Reach Bill St John at bsjpost@gmail.Com
Originally Published: May 11, 2017 at 5:18 PM MDT
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