There is no clear-cut list of the mother (or grande) sauces. Carême said there are four; Escoffier updated it to five or six, depending on who one believes. For the purposes of this article we’re going with five: béchamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise and tomato.
From each of the mother sauces come many derivatives and variations. Understanding the underlying mother sauce will improve technique and boost the flavour profile of any sauce making. Professional kitchens will often have a ‘set’ of mother sauces keeping warm on the back of the stove to use ladles of them to form sauces for each dish on the fly.
The Five Mother Sauces
Béchamel Sauce
- Béchamel, or ‘basic white sauce’, is a combination of milk and a roux blonde. A roux being equal parts, by weight, of softened butter and flour, cooked to remove the raw flavour of the flour (and can be darkened to form many types of roux… but that’s another article.) The roux is formed and milk is then whisked in until thickened.
Velouté Sauce
- Velouté is a white sauce as well but replaces the milk with a white stock. It can be made with any white stock (a white stock is a stock where the meat and bones have not been browned before making the stock), and, once again, a roux blonde. Hot stock is added to the roux and whisked in until the sauce develops a velvety texture (thus the name.)
Espagnole Sauce
- Espagnole is made with veal stock, usually, a dark brown, or ‘brick’ roux, mirepoix, tomato paste and off-cuts of beef or veal. The veal stock is whisked into the roux to thicken while classic mirepoix is cooked off with tomato paste, the mirepoix then being added to the main sauce.
Hollandaise Sauce
- Hollandaise is an emulsified sauce made with egg yolks and butter with an acid, usually lemon juice. This is the hardest of the mother sauces to master as it requires a large amount of time and effort due to its propensity to split if even looked at in the wrong way. When properly prepared the sauce will be thick and luscious with a pronounced acid note and buttery flavour.
Tomato Sauce
- Tomato sauce is a sauce made with tomatoes, mirepoix, thyme and bay leaves most commonly, though this sauce has, by far, the largest number of variations. The recipes are legion for this mother sauce alone, the derivatives fill copious volumes. Keeping it simple is usually the best route and allows for more derivatives if the flavour profile is not overly strong, going so far as to leave out the thyme and bay leaf.
Derivations on a Theme
The main derivative sauces of the five mother sauces are referred to as ‘small sauces’ or ‘secondary sauces’ and are part of many chef’s culinary repertoire. The small sauces basically encompass the ‘named sauces’ only as any sauce which starts with a mother sauce is a derivative. Lyonnaise, mornay, béarnaise, and so on are all classic examples of small sauces.
Learning how to make and modify the mother sauces makes for better finished sauces, more confidence and a great canon of French terms to impress your friends. The sauces are akin to all music: everything leads back to Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart.
Joshua Longley - I am a computer geek by trade and a cook in a past life and I am also a voracious reader. Favourite authors include Tom Robbins, Kurt ...
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