The 5 Grand Sauces Every Cook Should Know (2024)

FAQs

What are the 5 basic sauces in cooking? ›

The five mother sauces are hollandaise, tomato (sauce tomat), bechamel, Espagnole, and veloute. French chef Auguste Escoffier identified the five mother sauces, forever associating them with French cuisine. However, mother sauces are relevant in all modern cooking practices.

Accordingly, the five French mother sauces — velouté, béchamel, hollandaise, espagnole and tomato — are an extremely important part of a culinary curriculum, as they are a starting point for many more complex sauces and preparations.

Five basic types of sauces appear over and over again on menus and in cookbooks that feature the kind of vegetable-heavy, flavor-dense food that cooks and eaters favor today: yogurt sauce, pepper sauce, herb sauce, tahini sauce and pesto.

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.

To the original four sauces (Velouté, Béchamel, Allemande, and Espagnole) enshrined by his predecessor, royal chef Marie-Antoine Carême a century earlier, Escoffier added Hollandaise and Sauce Tomate, and reclassified Allemande. (Mayonnaise, one of his essential cold sauces, is now considered the sixth mother.)

Bechamel – a milk based sauce that is thickened with a roux (clarified butter and flour). This sauce is named after its creator Louis XIV's steward, Louis de Béchamel. Considered the king of all sauces, and often called a cream sauce because of its consistency, this sauce is most often used in all types of dishes.

In the culinary arts, the term "mother sauce" refers to any one of five basic sauces, which are the starting points for making various secondary sauces or "small sauces." They're called mother sauces because each one is like the head of its own unique family.

Mother sauces, first classified by French Chef Marie-Antoine Carême and later codified by Auguste Escoffier, are the starting points for countless 'daughter' sauces in French cuisine.

What part of the pig is souse meat? ›

Souse features meat from various parts of the pig, including the feet, the head, the ears, and the tail. However, various parts from cows and chickens can also be used.

Sauces considered mother sauces. In order (left to right, top to bottom): béchamel, espagnole, tomato, velouté, hollandaise, and mayonnaise.

A sauce made by adding flavoring to a basic mother sauce is a “sister” sauce.

Famous chef Marie-Antoine Carême codified the four original Mother Sauces in the early 1800s. His recipes for Velouté, Béchamel, Allemande, and Espagnole were vital to every French chef. About 100 years later, chef Auguste Escoffier reclassified Allemande as a “daughter sauce,” or variation, of velouté.

Sauces considered mother sauces. In order (left to right, top to bottom): béchamel, espagnole, tomato, velouté, hollandaise, and mayonnaise.