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Five mother sauces every serious cook should know

Five mother sauces every serious cook should know

May 19, 2015 by ohmydish 5 Comments

We’ve recently made and published the five French mother sauces used all over the world in restaurants, hotels, and professional kitchens. These 5 sauces act as a building block for creating other dishes.

Let’s start with a little history lesson of French cooking.

M A Careme 227x300 - Five mother sauces every serious cook should know
Marie-Antoine Carême

Marie Antoine (Antonin) Carême was an early practitioner and exponent of the elaborate style of cooking known as grande cuisine, the “high art” of French cooking: a grandiose style of cookery favoured by both international royalty and by the newly rich of Paris. Carême is often considered as one of the first internationally renowned celebrity chefs.

– Quote from Wikipedia

 

Marie-Antoine Carême announced the béchamel, velouté, Espagnole and tomato sauce as basic building blocks for all other sauces in his work L’art de la cuisine Française au dix-neuvième siècle in the 19th century.

The Hollandaise sauce got added later on. Ever since then, many people all around the world consider other — though unofficial– sauces as extended relatives to these five basic mother sauces. Most chefs will tell you the importance of the five mother sauces.

Many other people will state the importance of a basic chocolate sauce and chimichurri as important as the five French mother sauces. Don’t worry though, these sauces might seem a little intimidating at first. But when you embed these in your cooking skill set, you’ll find them all equally important as a starting point for a whole array of sauces.

You can whisk these up whenever you feel like getting fancy, once you get the feel for these sauces. We’ve put up an overview of these five mother sauces, for those of you who anxious enough to learn each and every one of these sauces.

The five mother sauces:

How to make bechamel sauce square - Five mother sauces every serious cook should know
How to make bechamel sauce
How to make veloute sauce square - Five mother sauces every serious cook should know
How to make veloute sauce
How to make sauce Espagnole square - Five mother sauces every serious cook should know
How to make espagnole sauce
How to make tomato sauce square - Five mother sauces every serious cook should know
How to make tomato sauce
Holandaise sauce square - Five mother sauces every serious cook should know
Hollandaise sauce

Béchamel sauce

A sauce that can be made in its most basic form by combining a roux and some cream. Mix it up with other ingredients to create new sauces. Usually found in macaroni and cheese, croque madame or lasagna dishes. It’s very rich in taste and very creamy. Click here to learn how you can make a béchamel sauce.

How to make bechamel sauce - Five mother sauces every serious cook should know
How to make béchamel sauce

Velouté sauce

Exactly like the béchamel sauce, the velouté begins with a simple white roux. When the roux gets mixed in with white fish, chicken stock or veal stock, then it becomes a great starting point for creating amazing sauces. This is because technically a velouté sauce is not a finished sauce. Use it for dishes with chicken, shrimp, gravies or mushroom cream sauces.

How to make veloute sauce - Five mother sauces every serious cook should know
How to make veloute sauce

Espagnole sauce

Also known as “brown sauce”, the Espagnole sauce begins with something called a mirepoix. This is a French abbreviation for carrots, celery, and onions. Combine with a beef stock and deglazed fond (from beef bones), add some tomato paste and spices. It’s a very heavy and rich sauce. Pairs very well with steaks, filet mignon, and mushrooms, accompanied with a large glass of red wine. Simply divine.

How to make sauce Espagnole - Five mother sauces every serious cook should know
How to make Espagnole sauce

Tomato sauce

You’ve undoubtedly tasted this sauce before over a big plate of spaghetti bolognese. A classic tomato sauce is usually just a combination of onions, garlic, and fresh ripe tomatoes. You can start this sauce with a roux if you are that kind of purist, but most tomato sauces are made from a tomato reduction. You’ll find this sauce in many, many recipes like pizza and pasta.

How to make tomato sauce - Five mother sauces every serious cook should know
How to make tomato sauce

Hollandaise sauce

As we’ve mentioned before in this article, the Hollandaise sauce got added as number 5 to the mother sauces. You can think of this sauce as a very fancy mayonnaise, which uses clarified butter instead of oil. It’s an essential sauce when making a dish like classic asparagus with hollandaise sauce. This sauce is pretty special since it uses a method called emulsification. Basically, it uses a binding agent such as an egg yolk to combine two ingredients together that normally don’t mix well together. Give a try to combine butter and lemon juice, without using a binding agent! It’s not awesome. Sure, making a Hollandaise sauce takes time, and tempering the mixture is important to make sure the eggs don’t turn int an omelet.

Holandaise sauce - Five mother sauces every serious cook should know
Hollandaise sauce

Finishing up

Well, get creative and start learning these amazing 5 sauces. You can click on each image or title to navigate to the relevant recipe, we’ve put them up before writing this article. If you have any comments or questions, don’t hesitate and ask us by using the comment form below.

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You might be interested in:

How to make sauce Espagnole 120x120 - Five mother sauces every serious cook should knowHow to make espagnole sauce How to make veloute sauce 120x120 - Five mother sauces every serious cook should knowHow to make velouté sauce How to make tomato sauce 120x120 - Five mother sauces every serious cook should knowHow to make tomato sauce How to make bechamel sauce 120x120 - Five mother sauces every serious cook should knowHow to make bechamel sauce Holandaise sauce 120x120 - Five mother sauces every serious cook should knowHow to make Hollandaise sauce

Filed Under: Blog, Sauces Tagged With: bechamel, espagnole, french, french sauces, history, hollandaise, kitchen knowledge, mother sauces, sauces, tomato sauce, veloute

About ohmydish

Veronique works as a chef and Marco builds websites. We've started ohmydish.com in 2014 to give us a way of sharing our recipes with the world. Since we like all kinds of foods, you'll see dishes from every kitchen imaginable. Our recipes are not specifically healthy, vegan, easy or frugal, but they do have one thing in common: they are all made with passion. You can contact us if you have any questions about food, recipes or our food blog.

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  1. How to make bechamel sauce - ohmydish.com says:
    January 7, 2017 at 11:55 PM

    […] sauce is one of the 5 mother sauces, that’s why we think it is important for us to teach you guys and girls how to make […]

    Reply
  2. How to make velouté sauce - ohmydish.com says:
    January 7, 2017 at 11:55 PM

    […] sauce is one of the 5 mother sauces, that’s why we think it is important for you guys to know how it’s […]

    Reply
  3. How to make espagnole sauce - ohmydish.com says:
    January 7, 2017 at 11:55 PM

    […] sauce is one of the 5 mother sauces, that’s why we think it is important for you guys to know how it’s made! The following […]

    Reply
  4. How to make tomato sauce - ohmydish.com says:
    January 7, 2017 at 11:56 PM

    […] is one of the 5 mother sauces, that’s why we think it is important for you guys to know how it’s made! The following recipe […]

    Reply
  5. How to make Hollandaise sauce - ohmydish.com says:
    January 7, 2017 at 11:57 PM

    […] Hollandaise sauce is one of the 5 mother sauces, that’s why we think it is important for you guys to know how it’s made! The following recipe […]

    Reply

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