MirepoixBéchamel
White roux and milk, infused with onion and bay. The gentlest of the five and the one everything creamy is built on.
OpenMirepoix
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Every derivative sauce, all recipes, all technique lessons — offline.
Velouté
A blond roux loosened with clear stock and simmered until it is glossy. Tastes of whatever stock you made it with, which is the whole point.
OpenEspagnole
Brown roux, brown stock, and two hours of patient skimming. The deepest of the five and the parent of every red-wine and mushroom sauce.
OpenTomato Sauce
The only mother sauce whose thickening comes mostly from the vegetable itself. Pork fat, a little flour and long slow cooking do the rest.
OpenHollandaise
Yolks, butter and acid held together by heat and nerve. The one mother sauce with no flour in it, and the one that can break in front of you.
OpenBéarnaise
Hollandaise with the vinegar reduction rebuilt around tarragon and shallot. The sauce for grilled beef, and the reason anyone learns emulsions.
OpenChoron
Béarnaise with tomato folded in. Pink, slightly sweeter, and it holds better on a plate that is going to sit.
OpenMaltaise
Hollandaise finished with blood orange juice and zest. Made for asparagus and almost nothing else.
OpenMousseline
Hollandaise lightened with whipped cream just before serving. Twice the volume, half the weight, and it will not wait.
OpenMornay
Béchamel with Gruyère and a yolk. The gratin sauce — it browns where other sauces only dry out.
OpenSoubise
Béchamel carrying a large quantity of onion cooked white. Sweet without sugar, and it makes plain meat taste seasoned.
OpenMustard sauce
Béchamel finished off the heat with Dijon. Boil it and the mustard turns bitter, which is why so many versions taste wrong.
OpenSuprême
Chicken velouté reduced with cream until it is ivory and heavy. The most useful sauce in the book for anyone cooking poultry.
OpenAllemande
Velouté thickened a second time with yolks and cream. A liaison, not a reduction — and it can never be boiled again.
OpenAurore
Velouté tinted with reduced tomato until it is the colour of dawn, which is where the name comes from.
OpenBercy
Fish velouté built on a shallot and white-wine reduction, finished with cold butter. The classic sauce for anything poached in its own stock.
OpenBordelaise
Red wine and shallot reduced to almost nothing, then let down with Espagnole. Traditionally finished with poached marrow.
OpenChasseur
Mushrooms and shallot in butter, white wine, tomato and Espagnole. The hunter's sauce: fast, and built in the pan the meat came out of.
OpenMadère
Demi-glace finished with Madeira added off the heat. Boil the Madeira and you boil away the only reason it is there.
OpenRobert
Onion, white wine, Espagnole and mustard stirred in at the end. One of the oldest named sauces in the French repertoire.
OpenPiquante
Robert's sharper cousin: vinegar in place of some of the wine, and cornichons chopped in at the end.
OpenProvençale
Tomato sauce with garlic, olive oil and parsley added late so the garlic stays green rather than sweet.
OpenPortugaise
Tomato sauce with onion cooked soft in oil and a great deal more tomato flesh. Thicker, sweeter, and it holds a stuffing.
OpenNoisette
Hollandaise built on browned butter. One change to the fat and the sauce tastes of hazelnut — which is what its name says.
OpenCream sauce
Béchamel let down with cream and reduced back. The simplest derivative and the one most often made badly, because people add the cream and stop there.
OpenPoulette
Allemande with mushroom cooking liquor and parsley. The sauce for anything poached that needs to taste of more than the stock it sat in.
OpenNormande
Fish velouté enriched with mushroom liquor, cream and yolks. The classic sauce for sole, and the reason fish trimmings are worth keeping.
OpenRavigote
Velouté sharpened with a white-wine and vinegar reduction, shallot and herbs. Sharp where most velouté derivatives are soft.
OpenDiable
Espagnole over a fierce reduction of white wine, shallot and cracked pepper. Named for the heat, which comes from pepper and not from chilli.
OpenLyonnaise
Espagnole over onions cooked slowly to gold and sharpened with vinegar. Whether the onion is strained out or left in is the only real argument about it.
OpenCharcutière
Robert with julienned gherkins added at the end. One ingredient separates the two sauces, and it goes in off the heat.
OpenItalienne
Espagnole with a duxelles of mushroom and cured pork. The sauce that turns leftover mushroom stalks into something worth serving.
OpenCréole
Tomato sauce with onion, pepper and a long pull of heat. The vegetables stay in pieces here — straining it would take away the point.
OpenMilanaise
Tomato sauce with mushroom and cured pork, cut fine. Built for pasta and for anything crumbed and fried.
OpenWhite wine sauce
Fish velouté finished with a wine reduction and butter. The sauce most restaurant fish dishes actually sit on, whatever the menu calls it.
OpenOnion soup gratinée
Forty minutes of onions and nothing else. The colour is the recipe — rush it and you get onion water.
OpenMushroom velouté
A velouté in soup form. The mushrooms are fried hard first, which is the only way to get mushroom flavour rather than mushroom texture.
OpenCrème caramel
Custard baked in a water bath over its own caramel. The only two things that can go wrong are a burnt caramel and an oven that is too hot.
OpenCrème anglaise
The sauce every dessert leans on, and the one that turns to sweet scrambled egg at 85 °C. Learn it once and half the pastry book opens.
OpenTarte Tatin
Apples caramelised in the pan, pastry laid on top, and the whole thing turned over at the end. The apples must be firm or you get sauce under a lid.
OpenChocolate mousse
Chocolate, eggs, and nothing to hide behind. Three temperatures have to meet, which is the whole difficulty and the whole lesson.
OpenBlanquette de veau
Veal poached white, its own broth turned into an Allemande, and nothing in the pot allowed to take colour at any point.
OpenChicken chasseur
A whole dish built in one pan around the sauce it makes itself. The best argument in the book for learning to deglaze.
OpenSole meunière
Flour, butter, lemon, parsley. Four minutes of cooking and a lifetime of getting the butter to exactly the right brown.
OpenEggs with hollandaise
Two techniques in one plate: a poached egg that holds its shape and a sauce that holds its emulsion. Both come down to temperature.
OpenBeef bourguignon
A braise whose sauce is the cooking liquid, reduced. The browning at the start is not a formality — it is where every bit of the colour comes from.
OpenGratin dauphinois
Potatoes, cream, garlic. No cheese in the original — the crust comes from the cream and the starch, and cheese is what people add when the potatoes are wrong.
OpenSteak au poivre
Crushed peppercorns, a hot pan and a sauce made in ninety seconds from what the steak left behind.
OpenRoux: three colours, three jobs
Equal weights of butter and flour. How long you cook them decides both the flavour and how much they will thicken.
OpenWhy an emulsion breaks
Fat suspended in water, held there by the yolk. Three things break it: too much heat, too much fat at once, too little liquid.
OpenNappe: the spoon test
The only consistency measurement in classical cooking that needs no instrument, and the one every sauce recipe assumes you know.
OpenDeglazing without bitterness
The brown film on the bottom of the pan is the dish's whole flavour — unless it has gone one minute too far, in which case it is ruined and no liquid will save it.
OpenA clear stock is a skimmed stock
Cloudiness is not a mystery. It is fat and protein that were boiled back into the liquid instead of being lifted off the top.
OpenMirepoix: two, one, one
Two parts onion, one carrot, one celery, by weight. The base under most of classical cooking — and the app's own name.
OpenMonter au beurre: gloss without thickening
Cold butter whisked into a hot sauce off the heat. It is an emulsion, which is why it has to be cold, and why it cannot boil afterwards.
OpenReduction concentrates salt too
The most common way to ruin a sauce is to season it before it has finished reducing. Halve the liquid and you double the salt.
OpenStrain, and press nothing through
What you push through the sieve is exactly what you spent two hours removing from the sauce.
OpenWhen more salt is not the answer
A flat sauce is usually short of acid, not short of salt. Four things move a sauce: salt, acid, fat and sweetness — and most people only reach for one.
OpenPlating is where the sauce goes
Four decisions make a plate look professional, and none of them is decoration: height, empty space, where the sauce sits, and how hot the plate is.
OpenBouquet garni and oignon clouté
Two ways of adding flavour you intend to take back out. Both exist so the sauce never has to be strained twice.
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