Classical French cuisine is filled with hundreds of complex and diverse creations from delicate soups to exquisite sauces harmoniously put together from building blocks of flavours, aromas and techniques. The ingenuity of French food with its robust yet delicate cuisine comes from a solid foundation upon which the elegant cuisine is built.
The early 19th century gave rise to the world’s first celebrity chef, Marie Antoine Careme. The renowned Patissier serving the royal houses of Europe revolutionized haute cuisine when he classified all the sauces used in French cooking in his book L'Art de la Cuisine Française au Dix-Neuvième Siecle. When linking the connections between the sauces and tracing their family tree, Careme discovered that most French cuisine is built upon a strong foundation of four mother sauces. (To which Auguste Escoffier added the fifth sauce; Hollandaise a century later.)
The Anatomy of Sauce
Apart from adding flavour and richness to a meal, the most important quality of any sauce is its ability to smother and cling to whatever it gets drizzled or poured on. A sauce essentially consists of three main components; a liquid that provides the body and main flavour, a thickener that makes the sauce thick and stable along with a seasoning that elevates the flavour.
The most common thickener used in French cuisine, being used in 4 out of 5 mother sauces is Roux. Roux is the name for a cooked mixture of equal parts of butter and flour mixed thoroughly over a medium-high heat for about three to five minutes. The time for cooking roux depends upon the colour grade desired. For lighter coloured sauces, a white roux is preferred albeit a slightly more cooked blond roux for a deeper-coloured sauce while dark-coloured sauces go well with a brown roux.
Bechamel
Have you ever wondered about the secret behind grandma’s mac and cheese or lasagna being extra rich and creamy? There is a high chance that the nostalgic experience is the creamy mother sauce known as Bechamel. It was invented by Marquis Bechamel, the chief steward for King Louis XIV of France when he was trying to come up with a new way to eat dried cod.
Also known as White sauce, it is one of the most simplistic sauces starting off with the lightest coloured white roux to which milk is added with or without extra cream. While the milk reduces into a thick and viscous sauce, a small onion wrapped around with a bay leaf secured in place by studding it with cloves provides depth of flavour to the sauce. This studded onion is also known as a Cloute. The sauce provides a smooth and silky body to many baked or gratin dishes as well as vegetable courses. It acts as the base for most cream or cheese based sauces.
Veloute
The term Veloute means velvet which is an accurate description of its smooth and creamy texture. The blond-coloured sauce starts with a light-coloured white or blond roux to which a clear or white chicken or fish stock is added. The stock adds a complex layer of flavour which can then be enhanced with a dash of lemon juice or white wine.
The smooth and velvety texture is usually stabilized by adding a binding agent known as liaison at the end of the cooking process. It is a simple mixture made by blending egg yolks with heavy cream. Veloute is not a finished sauce but a primary stage for numerous mushroom, poultry or seafood dishes as well as the creamy and rich Veloute Soup.
Espagnole
Espagnole is the classical brown sauce and one of the main building blocks of French cuisine. It is prepared with brown chicken or beef stock along with charred mirepoix and tomato paste. It is thickened with a darker brown roux stirred into boiling stock. It is further seasoned with some more tomatoes, wine and ham. The sauce is reduced, blended and strained for a smooth consistency.
The name Espagnole, meaning Spanish, comes from the finest quality Ham and Tomatoes used in making the sauce which were imported from Spain. The sauce is the foundation of most dishes in French cuisine from roast sauces, steak sauces or red wine sauces.
Tomato Sauce
While we are familiar with the Italian tomato sauce delicately flavoured with basil and used to make pastas, the traditional French tomato sauce was a heavy and rich sauce cooked in rendered bacon or ham. It started with mirepoix, tomato concasse and tomato puree seasoned with French herbs and thickened with a brown roux.
Some French classical recipes call for peeled tomatoes being cooked in equal amounts of brown sauce to make a tomato sauce. The sauce is roughly blended into a chunky consistency and used for pork dishes or poultry.
Hollandaise
Influenced by the generous use of butter in Dutch or Holland-style cooking, the Hollandaise is a smooth and silky sauce based on a melange of clarified butter and lemon juice. Instead of a roux, the sauce depends upon a binding agent in the form of egg yolks to make an emulsion for two ingredients that usually would not mix.
The key ingredients for hollandaise are patience and effort as it requires energetic whisking along with tempering on a double boiler to ensure the eggs don’t curdle or the emulsion doesn’t break. However, it is easy to patch things up with a dollop of heavy cream or another egg yolk. Being delicate and heavy, the sauce is usually served on top of poached dishes.
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