In 1907 Escoffier organized French sauces around a few leading sauces, from which many others are made. Cooks today call five of them the mother sauces.
Key idea
The five mother sauces: béchamel (milk thickened with white roux); velouté (white stock thickened with blond roux); espagnole or brown sauce (brown stock thickened with brown roux, with tomato and mirepoix); tomato (tomatoes cooked with aromatics, classically with stock and a roux); and hollandaise (butter emulsified into egg yolks with lemon or a vinegar reduction).
Why it works
Learn the pattern, not five recipes: liquid + thickener + flavor. Change the liquid and you change the family. That is why a cook who knows the mothers can make hundreds of sauces.
Brown sauce, or Espagnole.
Worked example: Name the mother
Chicken stock thickened with a blond roux.
- White stock + blond roux.
Answer: Velouté.
Common mistake
Thinking demi-glace is a mother sauce. In Escoffier's system it is espagnole reduced with brown stock, a step beyond the mother.
Practice at home
- Make béchamel one week and velouté the next, from the Meal Prep recipes. Taste them side by side: same roux, different liquid.
In Meal Prep
- From the Great Kitchens: all five of Escoffier's sauces, adapted, with his originals quoted
- Béchamel
- Chicken Velouté
- Espagnole and Demi-Glace
- Escoffier's Tomato Sauce
- Hollandaise