25 May 5 Basic Starter Sauces for Your Recipes

5 Basic Starter Sauces for Your Recipes

Tomato Sauce 3 by Nathalie Dulex

The five starter sauces are known as the “mother sauces” of French cuisine and are considered the sauces from which all other sauces originate.  Sauces that start with the mother sauces and include other ingredients are called secondary or daughter sauces.

These are the sauce recipes that many of us learned in our homes minus the fancy names.  We use them to make our mac & cheese, soup and gravy.  They actually comes from a catalogued system of cooking that was created and refined by master French chefs in the 19th century.

The five mother sauces are:

Béchamel: A white sauce that is made with white roux and milk.

Velouté: A broth (chicken, vegetable, or fish stock)  that is thickened with blonde roux.

Espagnole: A classic brown sauce that is made from brown roux, brown stock (beef or veal), along with a mirepoix (diced carrot, celery, onion).  Some versions include tomato purée.

Tomato: Tomatoes cooked down until they turn into a thick sauce.  It is made with or without roux.

Hollandaise: An emulsion of egg yolks, clarified butter, and lemon juice (other acids like white wine can also be used instead).

My favorite mother sauce is the Béchamel because I love to use it when I make Moussaka.  I make it extra thick so it forms a deep layer on top of the casserole.  I have never tried classic Tomato sauce with a roux.  I want to see if adding the flour base changes anything.  I also have not tried Hollandaise because I was intimidated by all the stirring involved and worried that my sauce might break.

For those who have never made a mother sauce, I hope you will give them a try. Once you master these sauces, you have the building blocks to create all types of sauce recipes or even invent your own.