Master Sauces

There is a long history of sauce in French cooking, dating back to the Middle Ages. In classic French cuisine or ‘cuisine classique’ through to ‘nouvelle cuisine’ in the nineteen seventies and eighties sauces were a major component of most savoury dishes and many of these sauces are derived from what we call the five Master Sauces. In a traditional kitchen brigade, a ‘saucier’ or sauce cook is the most senior chef after the Head Chef and Sous or second chef. The saucier prepares all of the sauces, and casseroles as well cooking dishes to order.

A Demi-glace reduction

In the early nineteenth century, the chef Marie-Antoine Carême created a list of sauces, many which were his own recipes. Carême made many of these recipes using four base Master Sauces, Espagnole, Velouté, Allemande, and Béchamel. The chef Auguste Escoffier developed the list of sauces in his book ‘Le Guide Culinaire’ or A Guide to Modern Cookery, he removed Allemande because of its similarity to Velouté and added Hollandaise, the emulsion of eggs and butter. This list became the five Master Sauces with the substitution of Demi-glace for the heavier Espangole.

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