Part 2. Chapter 7. Sauces

"On devient cuisinier, on devient rôtisseur, on nait saucier."

- Briixat-Savarin.

This epigram of a famous French epicure, and our one-time Boston orchestra player, translated into English means: cooking and roasting can be taught, but it takes a genius to make a sauce. It is apt and to the point.... Savarin in his "Meditations on Transcendent Gastronomy" wrote nothing more true. There is an indefinable daintiness and delicacy in the flavor and smoothness of a sauce when it is properly made, that only one endowed with fine sensibilities of taste can justly appreciate, and only such an one, save by some fortuitous accident, can hope to prepare a perfect sauce. Entrust the roasting of a carefully selected joint or fowl to an ordinary cook and, if she but understand and apply the simplest rules of cookery, your confidence will not have been misplaced and the most epicurean taste will be satisfied. But it is quite another matter when it comes to the preparation of the sauce for the entrée.

The saucier must of necessity be dextrous in extracting and retaining volatile flavors; she must be able to select those that will blend, one with the other, and produce a harmony of savors adapted to the particular dish for which it is designed, and this adaptation of sauce to plat consists not only in the harmony, but often in the contrast of savors. Moreover, in the proper adaptation of a sauce, too strong flavors are to be moderated, weak but agreeable ones are to be brought out and accentuated, and dry, plain dishes are to be made moist and enriched. A perfect sauce is a promoter of digestion and an aid to nutrition ; when a contrary effect is produced something is wrong with the sauce.

One of the nice points, in making a sauce, is that of the temperature of the liquid that is added to the roux. A sauce of perfect flavor cannot be made by adding a hot liquid to the hot roux. A cold liquid may be added at once, or, if the roux be cooled, a warm liquid may be used. In all cases it is safer to add the liquid gradually and with continuous stirring; an expert can add all the cold liquid at once. Then, too, entirely different results are secured by the manner in which the flavor of vegetables and the kitchen bouquet are added to the sauce. A higher and more pronounced, to some more agreeable, flavor is brought out when these are cooked in the butter that is to be used in the roux, than when they are merely scalded in the liquid of the sauce.

In menus we often see the dish Roast Beef au Jus. This French appellation is an inheritance from Roman times; jus was their word for sauce, but its meaning to-day is limited to the juice flowing from the roast or grill when it is cut. It corresponds to the English word gravy - platter gravy. The addition of hot water to beef gravy or jus gives bouillon.

That the English formerly knew so little of sauces (compounds of juices, roux, mirepoix, etc.) save that of melted butter, was occasioned, perhaps, by the fact that they did not feel the need of them. The essence extracted from joints of well-fed beef, mutton and game was all sufficient. (Bread sauce is, however, an English production.)

The French, lacking rich, juicy provisions, were, in a measure, compelled to increase the number of their sauces and bring to a higher degree of perfection those that had been received as an inheritance. When one considers at random the six or seven hundred sauces described in French books of cookery and reads of glaze, mirepoix, blond and brown roux, the subject seems quite intricate; but this is not the case. All sauces (as distinguished from gravies) are made consistent or given body by the addition of a thickening, or binding agent, or in French a liaison. Making this thickening the basis of division, we may consider.

Gouffé reduces the matter of sauces thickened with roux to lowest terms, when he refers to four fundamental sauces from which all others are made - viz:

1. Espagnole. (Brown)

2. Velouté. (White)

3. Allemande. (Yellow, velouté and egg.)

4. Bechamel. (White, velouté and cream.)

In noting Gouffé's fundamental sauces we see that Allemande and Bechamel have velouté as their basis, so that in reality the subject of sauces, when it is reduced to its "lowest terms," would seem to centre round but two: Espagnole and velouté, or casting aside all apparent superfluities of flavoring, simmering, and skimming, to the simple economical and easily made brown and white sauces most generally used in this country in family cookery. With these simple sauces as a foundation all the different varieties of French sauces may be made, and these may be considered first under the head of

Utensils For Making Sauces

Pointed strainer, saucepan, double-boiler, cup holding half a pint, wire whisk, wooden spoon, tablespoon filled with butter.