The classical sauces are the innumerable derivatives of the primary sauces known as grande, Espagnole, Allemande, veloute, various essences, and various fumets, or flavors. All these primary sauces, or sauces meres, are sublimated decoctions or quintessences of the most savory and succulent meats, whether of quadrupeds, fowl, or fish. In a modest household it is impossible to make them; they require professional skill, expensive materials, and extensive apparatus. People who have princely establishments may prepare the finest sauces in their own kitchens, but the vast majority of mankind must depend upon the first-class restaurateurs for their preparation.

The great authority Dubois - Bernard, speaking of this branch of his art, says: "Sauces, by the care and labor they require, by the costly sacrifices which they necessarily involve, ought to be considered as the essential basis of good cookery. The gourmet would not think much of an elegant and sumptuously served dinner of which the sauces are wanting in that fineness of taste, that succulency, and that purity which are indispensable.

"A man is never a great cook if he does not possess a perfect knowledge of sauces, and if he has not made a special study of the methodical principles on which their perfection depends.

"Two causes contribute to the imperfection of sauces - defective knowledge or defective materials. An incompetent man, disposing of the finest resources, only obtains a mediocre and doubtful result; but a clever practitioner, if he has not the necessary materials, or if those materials are insufficient or of bad quality, does not attain the desired end. Experience, practice, knowledge, become powerless in such circumstances; the cleverest cook can correct and attenuate, but he cannot struggle against the impossible, nor make prodigies out of nothing.

"Consequently, in order to make perfect sauces, the cook must not only know how to go to work, but he must know how to make the sacrifices that are required. These considerations, which we cannot too strongly impress both upon amphitryons and upon cooks, have already struck more than one observer. True gourmets are not accustomed to make parsimonious calculations ; they know that good cooking is incompatible with insufficient means."

We must, therefore, conclude that the finest sauces are inaccessible to modest purses, because the cost of establishing the primary-bases is too great to be undertaken in modest households. The same remark applies to the grands bouillons of flesh, fish, and fowl. The production of these quintessences can only be successfully achieved by sacrificing large quantities of primary and often costly material.

The fine sauces referred to are the outcome of the high French cookery, the so-called cuisine classique of the first quarter of this century, a cuisine which could only operate with a profusion of ingredients. The secret of this cuisine consisted in quintessenc-ing the taste, whether of meat, fish, or fowl, by means of similar comestibles sacrificed for purposes of decoction or distillation, and the perfumes and flavors obtained by this process were added as condiments to the piece of meat, fish, or fowl served on the table. Fish, flesh, or fowl, heightened by the addition of its savory quintessence, such is the theory of the grand, or, as we may call them, the classical, sauces.

The era of fine cookery began in the reign of Louis XIV., when Vatel lived, and left a name as famous as that of Boileau, and when the grand seigneurs immortalized themselves by combining delicate dishes. Such was the Marquis de Bechamel, who has given his name to a fundamental sauce; such the regent who invented pain a la d' Orleans; such the Marshal de Richelieu, who invented mahonnaises, or mayonnaises, and attached his name to a score of noble recipes; such the smiling and imaginative Madame de Pompadour, who created the filets de volaille a la Bellevue, the palais de baeuf a la Pompadour, and the tendons d'agneau au soleil; such were the grand ladies who invented quails a la Mirepoix, Chartreuses a la Mauconseil, poulets a la Villeroy. The name of Montmorency has received additional lustre from a dish of fat pullets. The dukes of La Valliere and Duras, the Prince de Guemenee, the Marquis de Brancas, even the princes of the royal family, the Comte d'Artois and the Prince de Conde, did their best to cherish the sacred fire of culinary art; and whatever satirical writers may have found to say against the financiers and farmers general, none of them, whether hungry or gorged, dared to write a single word against the cooks and the tables of these heroes of incommensurable appetite. However, the idea of quintessential cookery, be it remembered, is due primarily to the cooks of the latter part of the eighteenth century who provided for the delicately voluptuous stomachs of the grand seigneurs of the reign of Louis XV. dishes of a sublimated chemistry, or, as a writer of the time says, dishes which consisted only of "quintessences raisonnees, degagees de toute terre-streite"

This ethereal cookery, these fine suppers whose menus suggest the repasts of the princes in the "Arabian Nights," lasted even during the early years of the Revolution, when the cooks of the ruined nobles, notably Meot, Robert, Roze, Very, Leda, Le-gacque, Beauvilliers, Naudet, Edon, became restaurateurs and sellers of good cheer to all who could pay the price. Beauvilliers, who established his restaurant about 1782, was for fifteen years the most famous restati-rateur of Paris, and provided literally such delicate and sublimated dishes as those which had hitherto been found only on the tables of the king, of the nobles, and of the farmers-general. The great restaurateurs of modern Paris are nearly all direct successors of one or other of the famous cooks above mentioned. And it is only in such establishments, much as they have degenerated, or at the tables of the Croesuses of the world, that one can hope to taste in almost satisfactory conditions the finest products of the cook's art.