Sauces Essay

A sauce is essentially a liquid plus some sort of thickening agent along with other flavoring ingredients. Sauce is a French word taken from the Latin salsa, which means salted. Excellent sauces are produced by learning to do the following: make a good stock, use thickening agents properly to achieve proper texture, flavor, and appearance and use accurate amount of seasoning. A cook who specializes in making sauces is called a saucier. The term "mother sauce" refers to any one of five basic sauces, which are the starting points for making various secondary sauces or "small sauces. They're called mother sauces because each one is like the head of its own unique family of sauces.These sauces are Béchamel Velouté, Espagnole, Tomato and Hollandaise. Each of the five mother sauces is made with a different liquid, and a different thickening agent although three of the mother sauces are thickened with roux, in each case the roux is cooked for a different amount of time to produce a lighter or darker color. Roux is a means used to thicken sauces.
Béchamel is probably the simplest of the mother sauces because it doesn't require making stock. If you have milk, flour and butter, you can make a very basic béchamel. Béchamel is made by thickening hot milk with a simple white roux. The sauce is then flavored with onion, cloves and nutmeg and simmered until it is creamy and smooth. Béchamel can be used in baked pasta recipes like lasagna, and also in casseroles. It is also the basis for some of the most common white sauces, cream sauces and cheese base sauces
Velouté is another relatively simple mother sauce. Velouté sauce is made by thickening white stock with roux and then simmering it for a while. While the chicken velouté, made with chicken stock, is the most common type, there is also a veal velouté and fish velouté. Each of the veloutés forms the basis of its own respective