Share Your Thoughts & Tips For Mother Sauces

Gents, I was fumbling around the web today and found myself going down rabbit trails concerning the classic five mother sauces of Franco cuisine. Namely; Veloute, Bechamel, Espagnole, Hollandaise, and Mayonnaise. Really it should be either six to include tomato sauce or five and occlude the Mayo. Mayo is not typically a cooked sauce anyway so some cooks only recognise the tomato sauce. I do think(though I am not certain) that Mayo was one of the big five when such things were first established. And anyone who has ever made a skillet full of sausage gravy to pour over scones(biscuits to us Yanks) has certainly made and knows what a Bechamel is even if they don't call it that. The essence of these sauces cross all of the classic European cooking styles so I am not asking to reinvent the wheel. Mostly just looking for techniques and favourite little nuances if you care to share.

I am also interested in how they apply to some of the daughter sauces that come from these classics. A bit of Googling reveals that many cooks do not bother with sauces anymore. And that seems a shame to me. The blend of certain meats or vegetables with certain sauces is a welcome gastronomic event. A good demi glace is quite a treat yet I will tell you I have never made one. I have always been intimidated by the tone of certain articles about having a Espagnole made with only hand crafted beef or veal stock. So some of it is simply not learning to begin with. However, I can assure you my old grannies could make these with some aplomb. They just didn't call them Espagnole. They called them pan gravy.

So lets hear it. Do you like completely hand made base ingredients or will you use purchased stock? Favourite pans and utensils? Do you favour the classic saucepan with sides equal to half the diameter of the base or do you like the workhorse 10-12 inch skillet?

And lets not be afraid to branch out a bit. How about some of the Indian sauces like the ones for Korma? Please feel free to add your thoughts.

Over here we wouldn't call that gravy and it certainly would never go anywhere near scones I try to make everything from scratch when possible, and today is stock making day, but I'll reach for pre-made if I don't have any homemade around. Favourite utensils really depend on the particular sauce, but generally just a heavy bottomed saucepan unless I'm making a pan sauce from something like chicken or gravy from a roasting tray.

I never really considered curry to be sauce as such, but you can't make a curry paste without browned onions, ginger and garlic

Dave, thanks for the response. Good stuff. As an aside, I have often wondered what the main cultural influence was that gave name to our American 'biscuits and gravy'. I understand the whole English biscuit = American cookie but the scone thing has me thrown. For the last twenty-five years or so scone America it has come to represent an over sweetened, egg enhanced mini cake sort of affair sold at bakeries and cafes. The way my old grannies taught me was that American biscuit = English scone; a flour and fat mixture with powdered leavening agent and salt combined with either cream, milk, or buttermilk and baked in a very hot oven to make sure the beasties puffed up fast and browned well on top. And they were rarely sweetened. These would be eaten with butter and good strawberry jam or covered with sausage gravy if a heartier meal was called for.

As for the gravy part I cannot decide exactly what its origins are but I suspect Germanic. It consists of ground sausage cooked down and then a bit of the fat skimmed off. Add the flour direct to the pan of cooked sausage and cook the roux. Add milk or a combination of milk and cream and cooked til thickened. It is typically seasoned well with ground black pepper. I am sure some variation of this 'gravy' exists in most British and European peasant foods. It can range from sublime to absolute crap depending upon how worthless the cook is. Also, I have always heard Brits reference ground beef or lamb as mince. Makes sense to me but I wondered if you refer to your ground sausage with the same term? Thank you again. Your additions to these cooking threads are always welcomed.

I don't recall ever seeing a sausage gravy in Britain.
But I am subscribing to this thread

Tony, from what I gather it is an American thing. It really is good though. Just make it with good sausage fat and don't make it too thin or conversely like wallpaper paste. Good sausage gravy used to be a staple in American homes and restaurants til the mid 1970s. Now you are lucky if you can find a place that makes it scratch. Usually some sort of powdered mix. I almost understand this is in the cutthroat restaurant business but home cooks? No way. If my wife can teach my fumble fingered fat bum to do it properly then anyone can.

Interestingly breakfast gravies/sauces can vary pretty widely here. Sawmill gravy in the South(really a classic sausage gravy) along with tomato gravy which is the same bloody thing with bits of tomato added to it from what I can tell. I have never had it. Doesn't sound good to me. And I even saw one gent post a comment on some web site somewhere that you have to be careful in plains States like Kansas because asking for biscuits and gravy will get you a brown gravy on them. I have lived in Kansas almost all my life and I have NEVER seen a restaurant offer brown gravy on biscuits(scones) by default. I suppose some fool has went in and asked for it but as the normal? No way. I heartily suggest to our friends in the Isles that you make up some savoury scones and a small batch of sausage gravy and give it a go.

Sorry to have sort of strayed a bit from main topic but I suppose American sausage gravy would be an offshoot of Bechamel since the base is very similar except you are using a different animal fat than butter.

Sausage gravy isn't really a thing over here, or in Europe from what I've seen (nor do we have ground sausage, although you can buy packs of sausage meat but it's emulsified) and gravy is arguably only 'proper' gravy if it's the result of a roast - e.g. chicken, turkey, beef or some other cut. Rest the cut on top of onions, carrots, celery etc and roast away in the oven until it's ready, then deglaze the roasting tray with some wine and stock, strain and thicken with cornflour

You're dead on about scones - eaten with lashings of clotted cream and strawberry jam with a cup of tea on the side (I'm a coffee man myself, but even I couldn't turn down tea and scones) I've seen savoury versions with cheese, but never served with any kind of sauce/gravy, though I wouldn't mind trying it!

As an aside, another byproduct from a roast would be the fat - beef dripping is an elixir of the gods! When I was a kid you used to be able to get chips (fries) that'd been fried in beef dripping and wrapped up in newspaper from your local chippy. They were brown and wrinkly, horribly unhealthy, but damn... I miss them. Sorry for straying a bit from the sauce topic!

No worries Dave. As for the good old pan sauce you mention from beef, chicken, or even game meats like deer are so fantastic I cannot believe they have fallen so far in American cooking. What you describe is exactly what my family cooked as I was growing up.

Much of the oddball nomenclature regarding cooking terms comes from America's desire to be anything but British after Independence. Things like cookie rather than biscuit, biscuit rather than scone were just nose thumbing. Truth of it is though, most of the country 'cooks British' for the most part. Beef roasts, mince, pork chops and loin roasts, roasted chicken, duck, etc. And the puddings such as custards, fools, and trifles still abound.

We have certainly lost some of it with the infusion of foreign cuisines the last three decades but before that, it was Beef Wellington, Sunday roast and potatoes, you get the drift. And good pan sauces were the norm and not some exception to be noticed by unsuspecting guests who will tell you they never eat heavy food like that. But they will devour it when you serve it to them. Usually it is because they have had some wretched canned or packaged version of sauce at restaurant.

By the by, if you can get your butcher to grind it(or if you have grinder or appliance attachment at home) then a pork shoulder(butt) roast makes great sausage. Just season it with sage to taste to start with. The make patties like burgers or spread the mince around in the skillet and cook it into little pieces and then give it the white sauce treatment. Season heartily with black pepper or a combination of black, red pepper, and even some sage. Makes good stuff. Don't overlook the old Bechamel standard of a pinch of nutmeg as well.

I still enjoy sauces, and I agree that it's something of a shame the way they've fallen by the wayside. Sauces are a cheap, easy, quick way to add depth, complexity, and luxury to any number of things. Somehow, somewhere, someone started the idea that sauces were mysterious and difficult, and now we have a generation or two of cooks that won't come near them.

When it comes to making a roux, I really to prefer one of my cast iron skillets unless I need more than will fit in there. If that's the case, then I'm fine with using a dutch oven (typically one of my old Le Creuset ones). Whatever it is, you want something that distributes heat evenly. Hot spots are bad! I typically whisk those sauces, but I'm happy using a spatula or wooden spoon.

For mayonnaise, it really does seem to help to drizzle that oil in slowly while whipping everything up. While you can get a bit lucky and just throw everything together, don't do that if you are short on time or ingredients. You might have to try a few times.

I've never made a true Espagnole, but I've done things like it.

For stocks, I do like making my own, but I don't always have a day to simmer stuff. I don't mind store-bought, if that's the way it needs to be. There is a very good product called "Better than Bouillon" that I'll happily use and have been pleased with.

Keep in mind that Escoffier's "mother sauces" are just his take on the basics of French cooking. There are plenty other "mother" sauces out there for other cuisines (as you've already alluded). We've made a pretty mean Marinara and Bolognese sauce over here from time to time.

there are still plenty of little restaurants all over the southern US that make old-school "sausage gravy" to put over biscuits. It's a classic, and it's still very popular. The father south you go, the more likely you are to find a lot of places still making it.

When I make Bechamel sauce, I still do it the old fashioned way, with half an onion studded with cloves (removed at the last minute), and adding a pinch of nutmeg.

Now I'm sad and can't remember the last time i made a proper roux.
I need to get back to basics.

I think the reasons sauces have fallen out of favor is because a good sauce takes more work than the entire meal combined. You cannot just throw some water, flour, and pan drippings into a pan and expect a good sauce.

I am originally from Germany. My grandmother was from what used to be the Sudetenland and made a blend of Sudeten German, Czech, and Austrian cuisine (this is what most people tend to think of as traditional German food). There was no such thing as a recipe. Women passed recipes down from generation to generation. Sauces were very important. Everything needed a sauce. My favorite was this one dish that consisted of bread (or potato, depending on which region you live in) dumplings and pork (not sure what the cut is called here, but in Germany, it is neck). After browning the pork, she would add onions, tomato paste, a few other ingredients, and then stock, preferably homemade stock.

Some things that I think separate good from great sauces: pan drippings, a proper roux with butter, some type of fat-containing liquid (e.g. heavy cream), a hint of acid (I like lemon), and allowing the sauce to simmer down.

Finally got my stock on the go so I'll have to find a use for it. All in the pan - 2 onions, 6 cloves of garlic, a couple of bay leaves and two teaspoons of peppercorns, the frames of eight chickena and one boiling chicken. The butcher I go to sells bags of frames at 75p each and the boiling chicken was only £2. Not a bad price for 3-4 litres of stock

Dave, sounds good. Home cooked chicken stock is superb. And those prices are grand. I cannot believe the prices of meat and poultry in the States right now. Streaky rashers are $5-8 per pound. Chicken meat is always over $1.00 per pound no matter where you buy it and breast meat is 3-4 per pound. Mince is 4-8 dollars per pound where I live and that is in the middle of cattle country. Kansas has more stockyards than just about any state but Texas and slaughterhouses galore in the western half. Yet we are paying historic prices for meat here. I can buy beef roasts and steaks on sale cheaper than mince. It is why I am considering my own meat grinder. Ridiculous.

Once of my favorite sauces is Sauce Mornay. Its basically béchamel with cheese added. Hollandaise is awesomely decadent, but I only tend to think to make it when doing Eggs Benedict. I have never done a real Espagnole before, but I do regularly use demi glace.

I'm in my second semester of culinary school at JCCC. I can assure you that every graduate of the program gets tons of exposure to the mother and secondary sauces. We spend the first two labs of each semester making stock, and then the non-perishable sauces that we then later use throughout the semester.

I'm lazy and when I cook at home I usually just use store bought stock. Beef prices are definitely nuts. My family owns a cattle farm north of Topeka. I do have a grinder attachment for my kitchen aid, so I usually grind all my own hambuger and sausage.

I made 70 gallons of veal stock and 70 gallons of chicken stock a week. The Veal stock takes 48 hours start to finish. The chicken stock 28. From there I made demi, a chardonay chicken demi, au poivre and a cabernet veal jus. Each of those sauces take a good 8 hours by themselves to yield around 4 gallons. I have to make those at least once a week, sometimes more depending on demand of banquets, brunches and regular lunch and dinner service.

Doing sauces and stocks at home isn't bad but the bones and trim isn't as readily available. Last menu I had a chicken consomme on the menu. I was making 20 gallons of consomme a week. If the stock was cloudy my consomme would be serviceable but not perfect.

As to nuances of mother sauces, Bechamel comes to mind. The Onion Piquet is usually overlooked when steeping the milk. The clove, bay leave and light onion give such a subtle touch to the sauce. And while sausage pan gravy is a bastardized bechamel it is too thick by most to be considered a sauce and is just a gravy. The principles are the same the same but my bechamel is thickened just enough to nappe or coat the spoon. It can roll around on an empty plate.

Veal stock has a lot of varying methods on getting the most flavor and color out of the bones. All involve roasting the bones in some form. Some roast the mire poix with tomato paste for the pintsage others caramelize the dickens out of all of it in a cast iron pan. Some will want to use remoulage from the past batch of stock, others use the remoulage for soups... Others want the stock at a simmer with the initial fat skimmed off before the fond is removed from the roasting pans then not adding the pintsage until the next round of fat is removed. It all yields stock but the colors vary widely and flavor will to.

Grandma never worried about a lot of that!l Great food was made none the less, I just try to make grandma's food even better!

Chef John, fabulous post. Great information. I get the point about sausage gravy being much too thick at times. My old mum calls it wallpaper paste. I much prefer it to have a bit of flow. BTW what really is the difference between sauce and gravy?

One sounds fancier...

Technical definition is if you start with pan jus or stock but nomenclature got thrown out the door decades ago on a lot of culinary terms and the cooking shows aren't helping either. Same with restaurants calling any mayonnaise based sauce an aoli without roasted garlic in it. Trying to sell things with word usage.