Everyone loves sauces…from the classic mayo to ketchup (catsup?) to tomato sauce, mustard, hot pepper sauce, guacamole, hollandaise, white wine…the list goes on and on for every taste, palate and culture…but how did we ever get into sauces in the first place?
A Brief History of Sauces
The word "sauce" is a French word that means a relish to make our food more appetizing. Basically, a Sauce is a liquid or semi-liquid food devised to make other foods look, smell, and taste better. Because of the lack of refrigeration in the early days of cooking, meat, poultry, fish, and seafood didn't last long. Sauces and gravies were originally used to mask the flavor and, ugh, smell of tainted foods.
200 A.D. - The Romans used sauces to disguise the taste of the food, most likely to conceal doubtful freshness. The main course, or primae mensai varied both in the number and elaboration of dishes. Roast and boiled meat, poultry, game or other meat delicacies would be served. No dish was complete without its highly flavored and seasoned sauce. Sometimes so many ingredients were used in a sauce it was impossible to single out any one flavor.
Marcus Gavius Apicius, a famous Roman gourmet and one of the first recorded cookbook authors, wrote at the end of one of his recipes for a particularly flavorful sauce, 'No one at table will know what he is eating'. These sauces were usually thickened with wheat flour or crumbled pastry. Honey was often incorporated into a sweet dish or sauce.
Highly flavored sauces often containing as many as a dozen ingredients, the most common of which was something called ‘liquamen’, a sauce with anchovies as its main ingredient. This sauce was so popular that it was actually mass produced in many towns in the Roman empire for centuries.
1651 - A little heard of sauce today, but very popular in the 17th century was Sauce Robert. It is similar to the present day Espagnole Sauce, basically a brown roux or a combination of fat and flour to create a thickening agent.
In Le Grand Cuisinier from 1583, there is a mention of a sauce Barbe Robert consisting of fried onions, vinegar and mustard for roasted rabbit, fry fish and fry egg. That actually sounds pretty good.
In Le Quart-Livre, François Rabelais mentions sauce Robert as being “indispensable for roast, rabbits, duck, pork, poached eggs..."
With such an endless variety of sauces and sauce ingredients, there are but five foundation sauces or basic sauces, in French these are known as the ‘grandes sauce’s or ‘sayces meres’. We in present day simply refer to these five basic sauces as The Mother Sauces.
Antonin Careme, founding father of French "grande cuisine," came up with the methodology in the early 1800's by which hundreds of sauces would be categorized under five Mother Sauces, and there are infinite possibilities for variations, since the sauces are all based on a few basic formulas. Sauces are one of the fundamentals of cooking. Know the basics and you'll be able to prepare a multitude of recipes like a professional. The trick is then making those sauces into healthy versions, like you’ll find on this blog. Learn how to make the basic five sauces and their most common derivatives.
The five Mother Sauces are:
Bechamel Sauce (white)
Veloute Sauce (blond)
Brown (demi-glace) or Espagnole Sauce
Hollandaise Sauce (butter)
Tomato Sauce (red)
These five sauces still provide the basis for making of many modern sauces, but no longer of most of them. One of these sauces have a record of two hundred years, the béchamel has lasted so long, not only because it is very good, but also because it is are so adaptable and provide a fine basis for a considerable number of other sauces like the béchamel derivative, mayonnaise.
Below are some sauces and the mother sauce (or derivative) they come from, along with how these sauces got started.
History: It is believed to have originated in Provence, France. As the landscape of the Provence area is not suited for cows as other areas of France, more for sheep, goats, and olive trees, butter is not a common ingredient in Provencal food. See "mayonnaise."
History: Chef Jules Colette at the Paris restaurant called Le Pavillon Henri IV in the 19th century invented Béarnaise sauce in Paris, France. It was named Béarnaise in Henry's honor as he was born in Bearn, France (a region in the Pyreness mountain range in southwest France). It is said that every chef at the restaurant tried to claim the recipe as his own.
In France, it is one of the four basic sauces called "meres" or "mother sauces" from which all other sauces derive. It is also know as "white sauce." It is a smooth, white sauce made from a roux made with flour, boiled milk, and butter. It is usually served with white meats, eggs, and vegetables. It forms the basis of many other sauces.
History: There are four theories on the origin of Béchamel Sauce:
The Italian version of who created this sauce is that it was created in the 14th century and was introduced by the Italian chefs of Catherine de Medici (1519-1589), the Italian-born Queen of France. In 1533, as part of an Italian-French dynastic alliance, Catherine was married to Henri, Duke of Orleans (the future King Henri II of France. It is because of the Italian cooks and pastry makers who followed her to France that the French came to know the taste of Italian cooking that they introduced to the French court. Antonin Carème(1784-1833), celebrated chef and author, wrote in 1822: "The cooks of the second half of the 1700’s came to know the taste of Italian cooking that Catherine de’Medici introduced to the French court."
Béchamel Sauce was invented by Duke Philippe De Mornay (1549-1623), Governor of Saumur, and Lord of the Plessis Marly in the 1600s. Béchamel Sauce is a variation of the basic white sauce of Mornay. He is also credited with being the creator of Mornay Sauce, Sauce Chasseur, Sauce Lyonnaise, and Sauce Porto.
Marquis Louis de Béchamel (1603–1703), a 17th century financier who held the honorary post of chief steward of King Louis XIV's (1643-1715) household, is also said to have invented Béchamel Sauce when trying to come up with a new way of serving and eating dried cod. There are no historical records to verify that he was a gourmet, a cook, or the inventor of Béchamel Sauce. The 17th century Duke d'Escars supposedly is credited with stating:
"That fellow Béchameil has all the luck! I was serving breast of chicken a la crème more than 20 years before he was born, but I have never had the chance of giving my name to even the most modest sauce."
It is more likely that Chef Francois Pierre de la Varenne (1615-1678) created Béchamel Sauce. He was a court chef during King Louis XIV's (1643-1715) reign, during the same time that Béchamel was there. He is often cited as being the founder of haute cuisine (which would define classic French cuisine). La Varenne wrote Le Cuisinier Francois (The True French Cook), which included Béchamel Sauce. It is thought that he dedicated it to Béchamel as a compliment. La Varenne recipes used roux made from flour and butter (or other animal fat) instead of using bread as a thickener for sauces.
History: It is thought that Chasseur sauce was invented by Duke Philippe De Mornay (1549-1623), Governor of Saumur, and Lord of the Plessis Marly in the 1600s. He was a great protestant writer and called the protestant pope. It is said that he also invented Mornay Sauce, Sauce Béchamel, Sauce Lyonnaise, and Sauce Porto.
(1) A French culinary term. It is a type of a sauce, usually a thick one, which derives it body (either entirely or in part), from pureed fruits or vegetables. A sauce of cooked down tomatoes can be a tomato coulis as can a puree of strained blackberries.
(2) Today coulis also means a thick soup made with crayfish, lobster, prawns, and other crustaceans - the word being used where bisque has formerly been used.
History: In old English cookbooks, the world "cullis" is found but this has fallen into disuse and "coulis" has taken its place. At one time, coulis were sauces and also the juices which flowed from roasting meat. Some cooks called liquids purees coulis, but only those prepared with chicken, game, fish, crustaceans, and some vegetables.
History - Most historians agree that it was originally called Sauce Isigny after a town in Normandy, Isigny-sur-Mer, known for its butter. Today, Normandy is called the cream capital of France. During World War I, butter production came to a halt in France and had to be imported from Holland. The name was changed to hollandaise to indicate the source of the butter and was never changed back.
17th Century - Sauce Hollandaise, as we now know it, is the modern descendant of earlier forms of a sauce believed to have been brought to France by the Heugenots. It appears to have actually been a Flemish or Dutch sauce thickened with eggs, like a savory custard, with a little butter beaten in to smooth the texture.
1651 - Francois Pierre de La Varenne (1618-1678), in his cookbook, Le cuisine françois (The True French Cook) has a recipe for a similar sauce in his recipe for Asparagus in Fragrant Sauce:
"Choose the largest, scrape the bottoms and wash, then cook in water, salt well, and don't let them cook too much. When cooked, put them to drain, make a sauce with good fresh butter, a little vinegar, salt, and nutmeg, and an egg yolk to bind the sauce; take care that it doesn't curdle; and serve the asparagus garnished as you like."
History: When first invented, it was called Mahonnaise. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the sauce got its present name of mayonnaise purely by accident through a printing error in an early 1841 cookbook. There are many conflicting stories on the origin of mayonnaise:
Mayonnaise may have remained unnamed until after the Battle of Arques in 1589. It may then have been christened "Mayennaise" in 'honor' of Charles de Lorraine, duc de Mayenne (1554-1611), supposedly because he took the time to finish his meal of chicken with cold sauce before being defeated in battle by Henri IV (1553-1610).
Other historians claim it received its name from the Old French words "moyeunaise" or "moyeu," meaning, "egg yok."
Nevertheless, in 1910, Nina Hellman, a German immigrant from New York City, made a dressing that her husband, Richard Hellman, used on the sandwiches and salads he served in his New York delicatessen. He started selling the spread in "wooden boats" that were used for weighing butter. Initially he sold two versions of the recipe, and to differentiate between the two, he put a blue ribbon around one. In 1912, there was such a great demand for the "ribbon" version, that Hellmann designed a "Blue Ribbon" label, which he placed on larger glass jars. He did so well that he started a distribution business, purchased a fleet of trucks, and in 1912 built a manufacturing plant. Also Best Foods, Inc. in California did the same. Hellman and Best Foods later merged and account for about 45% of all bottled mayonnaise sole in the United States
History: The sauce was originally named after a Mr. Wenburg, a frequent guest at the Delmonico restaurant. Mr. Wenburg and the boss of the Delmoico had an argument, thus causing Wenburg to insist that the sauce be renamed. The first three letters were changed to "New" instead of "Wen" to create the name "Newberg."
Allemande Sauce - Veal veloute with egg yolk and cream liaison.
Supreme Sauce - Chicken veloute reduced with heavy cream
Vin Blanc Sauce - Fish veloute with shallots, butter, and fines herbs.
So, there you have your lesson on sauces, the history of sauces and the basic ingredients of classic French sauce cuisine. Once you get accustomed to eating healthy, use your imagination to create healthier versions of some of these classics…start with my healthy version of the most common of all sauces, Mayonnaise, by reading HERE If you take the lesson of eliminating unhealthy or not-so-healthy ingredients from the classic and replacing them with healthier, workable ingredients, you’ll have created a sauce that you can live with…literally.
Stay healthy people…and keep praising God for his bountiful greatness, salvation and mercy!
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