As long as people have been cooking things, they’ve put sauces on them. A sauce can enhance and accent the flavors of the dish, be it meat or vegetable. It’s why we dress salads, for instance. I have always loved, for example, taking a pot roast, and roast carrots and potatoes, and dipping them in Green Goddess salad dressing. It really makes the veggies—and the beef too—taste better. There are literally thousands and thousands of different sauces. Let’s talk about some.
First though, what even IS a sauce? Well, Wikipedia (I know, I know) says the following:
In cooking, a sauce is a liquid, cream, or semi-solid food, served on or used in preparing other foods. Most sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavor, moisture, and visual appeal to a dish. Sauce is a French word taken from the Latin salsa, meaning salted
In ancient Roman cooking, for example, the sauce was a way to deliver salt to the dish. Much in the way Soy and Fish sauces deliver salt to Asian cuisine today. In medieval cooking, sauces still added salt to a dish, but because the use of warm spices like cinnamon, clove, and eventually sugar was so prevalent in cooking, sauces then added astringency and acid to a dish as well Medieval sauces tended to be vinegar based and thickened with bread crumbs. Sauce ingredients are designed to accent flavors of what they are accompanying. For example, a horseradish sauce pairs well with beef because the bite of the horseradish eases the richness of the beef. And so on. I love a vinegar based sauce with my crock pot pulled pork, as any good Carolina native knows.
Now first, let’s get the 800lb gorilla out of the way: The French Mother Sauces. The SpruceEats has a great article on the sauces, “developed” in the 19th Century by Auguste Escoffier. I use developed in quotes, because these sauces had been around for centuries before Escoffier. He just determined the “origin” sauce of all the French sauce variations in true haute cuisine.
I use at least three of these all the time: Bechamel, Veloute, and a variation on Espagnole. How? GRAVY. Roux (brown if Espagnole), stock/drippings or milk, seasonings. Who knew the most country sausage gravy is based on haute French cuisine? Here’s a version of bechamel that I want to try:
I know, right? Then there’s the “pan sauce”. Basically, after removing what you’ve cooked, you deglaze your pan with wine and/or stock, then reduce until it coats a spoon. My sister in law makes a balsamic reduction when she pan cooks lamb chops. After the chops are cooked, she deglazes with stock, adds balsamic vinegar, and then reduces. Wine instead of stock would give it a deeper flavor. Me, for such a pan sauce, I’d also use the Monter au Beurre method: After reducing, turn off the heat and gradually add a couple of tablespoons of cold butter, stirring and moving the sauce until fully emulsified. I did it for the first time during the pandemic with some pan roasted pork tenderloin, and it was wonderful. Instead of butter, you can also add cream after deglazing to make a cream sauce, such as in steak au poivre.
Here’s an interesting pan sauce from Ancient Rome:
A neat thing is that scientists think they have found silphium again. If cultivated, it might become the world’s most expensive spice, surpassing even saffron.
I can go on and on and on about different types of sauces that exist, and that I have used. But I came here to talk about one of the best sauces I ever made. And the sauce’s recipe was from the 1700s. I’ll let Max Miller from Tasting History explain:
So, this is the height of 18th Century Haute Cuisine.
Here’s what I did. Now, as Max says, finding duck stock is hard, and most of us don’t cook that many ducks to freeze carcasses and what not, so I went and purchased this from Jeff Bezos:
As you can read, this is a full on glace. This 16oz container is supposed to yield 2 GALLONS of stock. But you can cheat with a glace. I added enough for three cups of stock to like 2 cups of water. Reducing became WAY easier. I took my shallots and, like Max, gave them a sweat to soften them.
I added them to my liquid and reduced for a few minutes
Once it got to where I liked it, I added the juice of two large navel oranges
After tasting, I thought it needed something. So I added some pepper. Y’all. It was SO good. BOTH on the duck and on the buttered furikake rice I served it with. I made it again to go with a lamb roast I made.
So, sauces are ubiquitous. From simple drippings to elaborate presentations, never forget a sauce. When applied properly, a sauce can take a good dish and make it exceptional.
This weekend, my WFD is kind of a double whammy as I prep for the week ahead. I’ll be making my ravioli in beef gravy I’ve written about, and also my mom’s tuna casserole, as I have to prep Friday meals for Lent. And meal prep is what I’ll talk about next week.