22Sauces and how they thicken

A sauce is a liquid, usually thickened, that goes with another food to give it flavor. It can also bring moisture, richness and good looks to the plate. A sauce may be served hot or cold, may be sweet or savory, and may be silky or chunky. Whatever form it takes, it should support the food and never hide it.

Few parts of cooking give a cook as much room to play with flavor, texture and color. A well-built sauce often comes together in several stages, each with its own rules. Unlike a roast or a cake, which needs only an occasional check, a sauce needs tasting and adjusting all the way through until its flavor is balanced and its thickness is right.

22.1 What a sauce is, and where sauces came from

What a sauce does

Nobody eats a sauce on its own. It is there for the food it is served with. At one end, a sauce works like a condiment and gives a contrast: mustard cuts the richness of pork or stands up to grilled food. At the other end, a sauce carries the food's own flavor further, the way the drippings of a roast or the liquid of a stew do. Most sauces sit between the two, laying a contrasting taste over the food's natural flavor.

Choosing sauces for a whole meal takes thought too:

• One is often enough. Two is usually the limit for a single meal. If you serve two, make their flavors, colors and textures differ while their style matches.
• Do not crowd the plate. New cooks tend to put too many colors and flavors together. One sauce blended carefully into a whole that seems simple beats a plate covered in different garnishes.
• Move through the meal in order. Courses, and their sauces, usually run from pale to deep in color and from cold dishes to hot ones, so the palate and the eye do not tire. Keep strong sauces away from the start of a meal unless something at least as bold follows.
• Match the occasion and the season. An aioli or a Mexican salsa suits a casual summer lunch. A sauce poivrade is classic and formal, and belongs in autumn or winter.

Classic French sauces are taught first not because they taste better than regional sauces or those of other countries. They are taught first because they form a tidy, strict system that is easy to remember and to build on, and its ideas carry over to other cuisines. Once you know how the ingredients behave, you can invent your own sauces and read unfamiliar recipes with confidence.

Greece and Rome

Little survives of ancient Greek cookery. Most of what is known comes from Archestrate, who wrote more about where to buy food, fish above all, than about how to cook it. The methods he names are plain, mostly frying and roasting. Greek sauces often used cheese and oil, sometimes with cumin.

Roman cooking is known mainly through Marcus Gavius Apicius, in the first century A.D. Roman cooks poured garum, a liquid made from fish entrails, into almost everything, alone as a sauce or mixed with leeks, onions, spices, wine, honey and olive oil. Its nearest modern relatives are probably the fermented fish sauces of Southeast Asia, such as nampla in Thailand and nuoc mam in Vietnam. Most Roman sauces also used honey and many herbs and spices, among them cumin, coriander leaves, dill, rue and caraway. Wine boiled down to an inky color (defritum) colored some sauces. Many recipes simply say to "bind" the sauce; some name starch, others whole eggs.

The Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Crusaders who came home from the Middle East brought sugar cane, almonds, pistachios, pomegranates, citrus fruits and spinach to Europe, and spices became more common. The usual sauce liquids were verjuice (the sour juice of unripe grapes, sometimes of crab apples) and vinegar, often set against honey, dried fruit or rare sugar. Nearly every recipe used several spices at once, such as saffron, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and cardamom.

There were no stocks in the modern sense yet. Cooks turned beef bouillon or cooking liquids into sauces by binding them with bread, almonds, egg yolks, puréed liver or the puréed food itself. Bread and almonds were pounded together first and wetted with verjuice, vinegar, wine or milk; beaten yolks went in at the end, as they still do.

The way people ate shaped those sauces. Food sat on thick slices of bread called trenchers, not plates, and was eaten with the fingers. A thin sauce would have soaked into the bread, so sauces were probably thick enough to cling to the food. Only when plates came into wider use could sauces become thinner and more delicate.

In the sixteenth century sugar became easier to get, though still not cheap, and recipes used more of it. Together with a keen interest in gardening, this led to jams and jellies much like those made today.

The seventeenth century: food that tastes of itself

French cooking now began to stand apart from the rest of Europe, with an idea that still guides sauce making: food should taste of itself. Spices that hid a food's own flavor were slowly dropped in favor of a lighter hand, especially with pepper. Herbs such as tarragon, chervil, basil and thyme came into common use, as did shallots, carrots, celery, wild mushrooms, truffles, anchovies, capers and cornichons (small sour gherkins). Butter took over from lard for cooking the flavor base and became part of sauces themselves. Oil, butter or coulis softened the sharpness of vinegar.

The great new tool was roux, then called farine frite. Before it, toasted bread was the usual thickener. Bread had the edge in tasting less of flour, but roux made a smoother sauce and stayed the favorite thickener well into the twentieth century. At first, flour went straight into meat juices that had been cooked down until they caught on the pot and browned, and was cooked there until it smelled toasty or turned reddish. That color is probably where the word roux comes from. Stews and gravies are still thickened this way, but for classic sauces the roux is now made on its own and measured into the stock.

Brown sauces of the time were built on coulis, a concentrated essence of veal or beef. Cooks also made very strong liquid bases from huge amounts of meat: a jus was pressed out of browned meat. Puréed almonds, mushrooms and truffles all served as thickeners alongside roux.

The eighteenth century: a system

Coulis, jus and bouillons were put into a system, so a trained cook could move between kitchens and turn out the same results. The old sour sauces faded, and new ones mixed the two older styles: coulis went into sharp sauces such as sauce Robert, and oil or butter softened acidic bases into vinaigrette and beurre blanc. Egg yolks were handled with more care, and the first forms of hollandaise appeared. Roux, now made with butter instead of lard, became the thickener of choice, and early forms of velouté appeared. Espagnole, béchamel and italienne all date from this century. Menon's La Cuisinière Bourgeoise, written for middle-class households, was the first of its kind.

The nineteenth century: mother sauces

After the French Revolution, cooks who had worked for the nobility found themselves without work, and fine cooking moved into restaurants that anyone with money could visit. Restaurants and the rise of chefs are covered with the history of the trade. see chapter 1: The first true restaurants

Antonin Carême wrote more about food than anyone else of his century. More importantly, he set out the system of mother sauces (sauces mères) and the many smaller sauces made from them. He named four: espagnole, velouté, allemande and béchamel. He also had the mother sauces reduced ahead, so that only a few flavors had to be added at the last minute to finish a small sauce. Carême also recorded the first modern mayonnaise, which he spelled magnonaise: olive oil and aspic bound with uncooked yolks.

At the end of the century, Auguste Escoffier gathered this cooking into Le Guide Culinaire, which many cooks still treat as the final word on classical French cooking. He simplified it further. His four mother sauces were espagnole, velouté, béchamel and tomato, with hollandaise and mayonnaise just behind.

The twentieth century: less flour

Edouard Nignon, a restaurant owner early in the century, made brown sauces with no flour at all, using strong veal stock and veal glace in place of espagnole. Later, in the 1960s and 1970s, the cooks of nouvelle cuisine removed flour from many sauces and thickened them instead with cream, butter and egg yolks, serving smaller amounts with a lighter texture. Not everyone agreed. Some chefs relied so heavily on cream and butter that the "lighter" sauces were in fact richer than the flour sauces they replaced. A country stew such as coq au vin is still best served in its own liquid, lightly thickened with flour.

In the 1970s Michel Guérard went further. He made sauces with almost no cream, butter or egg yolk, surrounded dishes with aromatic broths, thickened with yogurt and fresh cheese, and used a light sabayon for savory sauces. Since then, French and American chefs have borrowed widely from regional and ethnic cooking, including Indian food, and have begun using spices in sauces again.

Dessert sauces

Sweet dishes have sauces too, and they help a dessert in flavor and in looks just as savory sauces help meat and vegetables. The most useful are:

• Caramel sauce. The darker the sugar cooks, the more bitter it tastes, so stop it at the strength you want and add liquid. The liquid halts the cooking, adds flavor and softens the sauce. Cream, milk or butter make it rich; water keeps it clear; fruit purée changes the flavor. How runny it ends up depends on how much liquid you add and how warm you serve it.
  ▶ Watch
• Chocolate sauce, also called fudge sauce: cream or milk, butter and chocolate, served hot or cold. The balance of the three sets its thickness.
  ▶ Watch
• Crème anglaise ("English custard"): eggs, sugar and milk or cream, stirred on the heat until it turns into a thin, pourable custard. Keep it at or below 85°C (185°F) while it cooks, or it scrambles.
  ▶ Watch
• Coulis (in French, "strained liquid"): usually a raw, strained purée with pure flavor and bright color. It can separate quickly on the plate, so use it at the last minute. A fruit sauce is puréed fruit that is cooked with a starch to thicken it, and it is usually served cold.
  ▶ Watch
• Compote (French for "mixture"): fruit, fresh, frozen or dried, cooked and served in its own liquid, usually a sugar syrup.
  ▶ Watch
• Curd: fruit juice, eggs, butter and sugar cooked much like crème anglaise, from pourable to spreadable. Fruit butter holds no butter at all; it is whole fruit cooked, reduced and often puréed until very thick.
  ▶ Watch
• Hard sauce: butter, sugar and flavorings, often liqueur, piped, chilled and set on a warm steamed pudding just before serving.
• Sabayon: yolks, sugar and flavoring whisked over simmering water until thick, then whisked until cool. Whipped cream may be plain, sweetened or flavored; crème chantilly adds sugar and vanilla.
  ▶ Watch

A dessert sauce usually goes on the plate rather than over the dessert, so the dessert keeps its looks. Flooding covers the plate with a pool of sauce; a second sauce of the same thickness can be drawn through it with a pick or knife tip to make a feathered pattern. Outlining pipes a chocolate design that sets, then fills the spaces with colored sauce. A squeeze bottle, a spoon, a brush or an offset spatula makes dots, lines and streaks.

Choose the sauce for balance. A sharp berry sauce lifts a rich cheesecake or chocolate dessert, because acid cuts through fat. A sweet sauce on a sweet dessert hides the flavor of both. Flavor comes first and presentation second.

22.2 Thickeners: roux, slurries, starches and others

How heat swells starch and thickens a liquid is explained with the science of heat. see chapter 7: Starch gelatinization

A sauce is set apart from a broth or soup by being both thicker and stronger in flavor. Today's diners tend to prefer sauces that look light, so many modern sauces are only lightly thickened, or thickened by reduction alone.

How thickeners work

Thickeners work in three main ways. Solids in a liquid: starch and vegetable purée spread through the liquid and get in the way of the water, so it flows less freely. Starch molecules unfold in the liquid and hold on to water. The scientific word for this kind of mixture is a sol. Liquid in a liquid: an emulsion, such as hollandaise or mayonnaise, holds tiny drops of fat in water. Air in a liquid: a foam, such as sabayon. A good béarnaise is both an emulsion and a foam at once.

Vegetable purées thicken too. Some hold enough starch to act like flour; most give a slightly rough, matt sauce, but they add flavor, which plain starch does not. Tomato and green vegetable purées hold very little starch. A sauce thickened by such a purée alone will separate on standing unless another thickener joins it.

Roux

The basic roux is equal parts flour and fat by weight. Heat or melt the fat, add all the flour, stir until they combine, and cook until the flour no longer tastes raw and the color is right. Use a heavy pan so it does not scorch, and stir often.

The flour matters. The thickening power of a flour comes from its starch. Cake or pastry flour, low in protein and high in starch, thickens better than bread flour; high-gluten flour has too little starch to use.

Roux is cooked to a range of colors, from nearly white to nearly black:

• White roux is cooked only briefly, just until it looks frothy and bubbly. It goes into white sauces such as béchamel, where little or no color is wanted.
  ▶ Watch
• Blond roux cooks a little longer and starts to take on color. It suits ivory sauces such as velouté.
  ▶ Watch
• Brown roux cooks until it is darker and smells and tastes nutty. It goes into brown sauces.
  ▶ Watch
• Dark brown roux, the Cajun dark roux, goes past a French brown roux. It is hard to make and gives dark gumbos their color.
  ▶ Watch

How long to cook it depends on the heat and the size of the batch. White roux needs only a few minutes. Brown roux takes much longer; in classic French kitchens the flour either cooks in clarified butter for 15 to 20 minutes or is browned in the oven first. Brown roux is rarely made in restaurants today. A finished roux should be stiff, not runny, with a slight shine and no taste or feel of raw flour.

Escoffier's three roux

Escoffier gave the same amounts for every roux and changed only the cooking. White roux cooks just a few minutes, long enough to remove the unpleasant raw flour taste. Pale (blond) roux comes off the heat the moment its color starts to change, before it colors at all. For about a pound of brown roux he used 8 oz of clarified butter measured by volume and 8 oz of flour by weight.

Brown roux, in his method, cooks in a very heavy pan, either in a moderate oven or pushed to the edge of the stove, stirred often so the heat spreads evenly. It is done when it is a light brown and smells of hazelnut, like baked flour. Do not rush it. Too much heat at the start burns the starch, so it can no longer bind; you then need two or three times as much roux, which clogs the sauce without thickening it and leaves a bitterness that nothing can remove.

Choosing the fat

Any fat you can eat will make roux. How fats behave under heat is covered with fats and oils. see chapter 19: Smoke point and flash point

• Butter is the usual French choice. Whole butter burns at the heat a dark roux needs, so use clarified butter or oil for dark roux.
  ▶ Watch
• Oil that smokes only at a high heat, soybean or canola for example, lets a dark roux cook hotter and faster. Each fat gives the roux a slightly different taste.
• Meat drippings suit meat gravies. Rendered bacon fat is common in regional American cooking.
  ▶ Watch
• Cajun roux uses bacon fat or oil, cooked to medium or dark brown: rich in flavor, but it gives a thinner result.
  ▶ Watch
• Central European cooks use rendered lard or, more recently, vegetable oil. In German the roux is called Mehlschwitze.
• Japanese curry is thickened with flour fried with butter or oil and yellow curry powder. In Ottoman and Turkish cooking, roux (meyane) goes back at least to the 1400s.
  ▶ Watch

Getting roux into a liquid without lumps

The trick is a difference in temperature between the roux and the liquid:

• Whisk warm or hot stock into hot roux, whisking hard.
• Or whisk room-temperature roux into hot stock.
  ▶ Watch

A stricter rule is to always add the liquid to the roux, a little at a time while stirring, never the roux to the liquid. Once the roux has loosened with enough liquid, it can safely go into more.

Avoid extremes. Very cold stock hits hot roux so hard that the mixture can seize, spit steam or burn, and roux colder than room temperature sets in hard bits that are difficult to whisk out. Roux that is extremely hot is a hazard: it can spit when the liquid hits it. Depending on the dish, the sauce's other ingredients may go in before the roux has finished cooking.

A roux does not start to thicken until the sauce is close to boiling, and it keeps thickening for several minutes as the sauce simmers. So do not add more too soon. A long simmer thickens the sauce further by reduction. Once it boils, simmer the sauce to cook out any flour taste; most chefs allow at least 20 minutes, and many recipes 30, skimming off froth and impurities as it goes. Flour carries proteins and other flavor compounds, so a roux sauce needs that skimming. Use a heavy pot so the long simmer does not scorch, and not an aluminum one: the whisk scrapes the metal, turns a pale sauce gray and gives it a metallic taste.

Skim the fat off the stock before the flour goes in. Flour holds fat in suspension so it cannot be skimmed later, and the sauce turns greasy and muddy. One good method is to use half the flour a classic recipe calls for, then reduce the sauce slowly to the thickness you want. That gives more time to skim and softens any taste of flour.

How much roux

Roux to liquid for a light, medium or heavy sauce.

On a home scale, white sauce takes 1, 2, 3 or 4 tablespoons of flour per cup of milk, for a thin, medium, thick or very thick sauce. To make it:

• Melt the fat.
  ▶ Watch
• Blend in the flour and salt.
  ▶ Watch
• Take the pan off the heat and stir in the milk.
  ▶ Watch
• Return it to the heat and stir gently while bringing it quickly to a full boil.
  ▶ Watch
• Boil for 1 minute if it will not be cooked further.
  ▶ Watch

Each thickness has its uses:

• Thin: cream soups and vegetable sauces.
  ▶ Watch
• Medium: a base for casseroles and cheese sauce.
  ▶ Watch
• Thick: soufflé.
  ▶ Watch
• Very thick: croquettes.
  ▶ Watch

Two variations start from the medium sauce. Tomato juice in place of milk, with no salt, gives a tomato sauce for soup or gravy. Cooking the flour and butter to light brown and using water, bouillon or vegetable juice gives a brown sauce for gravy and meat. A good cream soup made on this base is smooth, never slick or lumpy, with no skin, no fat on top and no raw starch taste.

Other ways to use flour

Beurre manié (kneaded butter) is equal weights of flour and soft whole butter worked into a smooth paste with a fork. Unlike roux, it is not cooked, and it goes in at the end, most often to a stew whose liquid is too thin. Roll it into pea-sized balls and whisk them into the simmering liquid a few at a time. You cannot judge the result until the liquid simmers again, so wait each time. Stop cooking once it is thick enough. The butter adds shine and flavor as it melts.

Flour has an odd habit. After about 2 minutes of cooking it tastes strongly of flour, and that taste fades only as cooking goes on, usually by 30 minutes. That is why a sauce finished with beurre manié should not keep cooking.

In country cooking, stew meat is often dusted with flour before browning (in French, singer). The flour browns fully, so it loses its starchy taste, and it helps the meat form a crust. Only a little flour goes in, so you can still add beurre manié or reduce the liquid at the end. Some cooks instead cook flour with the vegetables after the meat comes out; if so, pour off any burnt fat first and use fresh butter or olive oil. Browning and stewing are covered with slow cooking. see chapter 10: Cut and coat

A white wash, or "cowboy roux", is cold water and wheat flour stirred into a dish. The boiling liquid frees the starch, so it thickens, but it never gets hot enough to remove the raw flour taste, and restaurants seldom use it. For a lower-fat gumbo, some Creole chefs toast the flour in a hot dry pan with no oil.

Pure starches and the slurry

Cornstarch, arrowroot and potato starch are nearly pure starch. They give a shiny sauce, while the protein in flour leaves a slightly matt one. They thicken about twice as much liquid as the same amount of flour, and since less goes in, cornstarch leaves less of a floury taste. They cost little and add no flavor, but they only thicken. Unlike roux, they bring nothing to the taste of a dish.

A pure starch must be stirred into a little cool liquid first, to a thin paste called a slurry. Dropped straight into hot liquid it forms lumps that have to be strained out. Stir the slurry into hot liquid without stopping. Unlike roux, cornstarch starts thickening almost at once in a hot liquid. Then cook it gently, usually about 5 minutes, until the raw starch taste is gone. see chapter 7: Hydrocolloids

• Cornstarch is the most common thickener in the industry and popular in Asian cooking. Its gloss may or may not be wanted. Long heating can break it down so it loses its thickness, so a cornstarch sauce is less stable than a roux sauce and should not be reheated.
  ▶ Watch
• Arrowroot, from the roots of tropical plants, is used exactly like cornstarch. It holds up longer under heat and is a little clearer, but costs much more. It suits delicate soups, sauces, puddings and custards.
• Potato starch came early to French cooking but never caught on for sauces in the United States. Like cornstarch, it breaks down with long heating.

Cornstarch starts to gelatinize at about 60°C (140°F) and finishes at the boil. Several ingredients hold the swelling back:

• sugar in large amounts
• egg
• fat
• dry milk solids
• very acidic fruit

In a sweet filling, hold back some sugar or the acidic fruit until the starch has set. About 100 g (4 oz) of cornstarch thickens 1 L of water or juice. Ordinary cornstarch turns cloudy; waxy maize starch stays clearer and runnier. Pre-gelatinized starch is already cooked, so it thickens with no heat when mixed first with sugar; put straight into water, it lumps at once. see chapter 7: Thickeners and gelling agents compared

Escoffier, writing at the start of the twentieth century, expected pure starches to replace roux, because they need no skimming. He was right that flour sauces would decline, but wrong about what would take their place. Western diners have never quite warmed to the glassy shine of a starch sauce. A little starch in a stock that is already well reduced will hardly show, though. Some kitchens reduce and degrease a brown stock, then thicken all of it lightly with arrowroot as a base for brown sauces made to order. Go easy: a dark, glossy sauce with no flavor is the worst result of all.

Egg yolks and the liaison

In sauce making, a liaison usually means one part egg yolk to three parts heavy cream. It adds richness and smoothness and only a little thickness; it does not work by swelling starch. Mixing the yolks into cream raises the heat they can take before they set, from 65–70°C (149–158°F) for plain yolks to about 82–85°C (180–185°F). Above 85°C (185°F) they curdle.

To add it, temper the liaison: whisk a little of the hot sauce into it to warm it, then stir the warmed liaison back into the rest of the sauce. Added straight to hot liquid, the yolks set into lumps.

Egg yolks hold several emulsifiers, among them lecithin and cholesterol. That is why they can bind fat and water into mayonnaise and hollandaise, trap air in a sabayon, and enrich crème anglaise. They are seldom used alone to thicken a sauce. Do not let a yolk sauce boil unless it also holds flour, which steadies it: sauce allemande and pastry cream contain flour and are boiled after the yolks go in. Sugar and acids such as lemon or vinegar steady yolks a little, but not enough to boil them. Never cook them in aluminum, which turns the sauce gray.

A white veal stew, blanquette de veau, shows the classic use. The poaching liquid becomes a velouté with about 100 g (3½ oz) of roux to 1 L of liquid. Each yolk is mixed with 45–60 ml (3–4 tbsp) of heavy cream, and three or four yolks' worth goes into each liter. The sauce is stirred gently until it coats the back of a spoon, and most recipes warn against boiling it.

Holding a liaison sauce. Hot food must be held at 60°C (140°F) or hotter, and the range from 4°C to 60°C (40°F to 140°F) is the danger zone, where most harmful bacteria grow. The ceiling for this sauce is 85°C (185°F), to stop curdling. How eggs set under heat is covered with eggs. see chapter 15: Heat and the egg

Gelatin and reduction

Meat and fish release gelatin, a protein that dissolves in water, as they cook. Concentrated enough, it gives a cooking liquid a natural, lightly syrupy body. The costly way to get it is to reuse stock to cook more meat, again and again, until the stock is thick on its own. Pork skin, veal feet and knuckles, or chicken and turkey wing tips added to stocks and stews give extra gelatin. Restaurants usually add it at the last minute as a glace: glace de viande for meat, glace de poisson for fish. A glace gives body and a deep flavor that balances stronger finishes such as wine or herbs.

Reduction alone has limits. A sauce reduced too far feels gluey, sets fast on a hot plate and can taste flat and overcooked. So gelatin is rarely the only thickener, and butter is often added at the end to take away the stickiness.

Cream

Heavy cream softens and smooths a sauce, but it thickens only once it is reduced. You can reduce it alone and keep it for sauces made to order, or reduce it together with the sauce base, which suits sauces made ahead.

• Use a pan three or four times the volume of the cream; boiling cream foams over in seconds.
• Whisk it at least every 2 minutes. Left alone, even on a low flame, it turns grainy and may break.
• Use a pan wide enough for the flame. A small pan lets flame lick up the sides and brown the cream there.
• Never cover it. Steam drips back from the lid and makes the cream grainy.
• Reduce wine fully before cream goes in. Raw wine's acid can break the cream and leaves a harsh taste.
  ▶ Watch

Cream is reduced by between a third and two thirds, depending on its fat and the thickness you want. For example, 375 ml (1½ cups) of cream added to 125 ml (½ cup) of flavor base may be reduced to 125 ml for a very thick sauce or to 250 ml for a lighter one. On its own, reduced cream is very rich and can feel chalky, so it usually works with butter, yolks or flour. Some chefs start the base with roux, or finish with beurre manié, so the sauce needs less reduction, which makes it less rich and cheaper.

Double cream has extra butterfat and needs less reduction. Where it is not sold, hang crème fraîche in a wet cloth or cheesecloth in the refrigerator overnight. The whey drips out and the fat in what is left rises. If the cream loses half its volume as whey, its fat roughly doubles from 35 percent to 70 percent.

Butter

Butter whisked into a hot liquid forms an emulsion, much as egg yolk does. The milk solids and proteins in the butter keep tiny drops of fat suspended and give butter sauces their gloss and body. Because those solids do the work, clarified butter cannot thicken a sauce. Cold butter works better than warm butter that has started to turn oily. A sauce bound only by butter is less stable than one bound by cream, yolks or flour, so many butter sauces are made to order.

Finishing a hot sauce at the last moment by swirling in pieces of cold butter is called monter au beurre. It adds shine, flavor and richness. A compound (flavored) butter can take the place of plain butter to add a particular flavor.

The amount has to be right. Too little butter floats to the top unless the sauce already holds cream, yolks or flour. Too much drowns the flavor, makes the sauce thick and waxy, and may break it. As a rule, a butter sauce made to order is about one third butter: 125 g (½ cup) of butter for 250 ml (1 cup) of base. Reduce the base a little too far rather than not enough, because a butter sauce is easy to thin but boiling it to thicken it will break it. Tomato or mushroom purée can start the thickening of a brown sauce, so less butter is needed.

Gums and modern thickeners

Modern kitchens also use thickeners that need no heat. Modified starch or xanthan gum is simply blended into a cold liquid, which keeps a fresh, uncooked taste. Many chefs now reach for hydrocolloids: flavorless, they thicken in very small amounts, and some cooks prefer the texture. Gelatin, agar and pectin are covered with the science of heat. see chapter 7: Gelatin, agar and pectin

• Xanthan gum is made by fermenting glucose. A small dose gives a thick liquid that pours easily and holds particles in suspension without masking flavor. It dissolves whether the liquid is hot or cold, acidic or alcoholic, but once set it can lose some strength when heated.
  ▶ Watch
• Guar gum, from the seed of the guar plant, thickens and steadies sauces and dressings in the food industry. Dissolve it in cold liquid; the more you use, the thicker the liquid.
  ▶ Watch
• Carrageenan, from red seaweed, works well with dairy and does not change flavor. Sprinkle it into cold liquid and blend. Algin (sodium alginate) dissolves in cold water and is used in uncooked icings, but does not work well with acidic fruit.
  ▶ Watch
• Locust bean gum (carob bean gum) has a neutral taste and a creamy feel, and dissolves in hot or cold liquid. Maltodextrin thickens and steadies sauces and dressings and can turn fat into a powder.
  ▶ Watch
• Soy lecithin, from soybeans, is an emulsifier that can be whisked straight into a liquid. It holds oil and water together and makes long-lasting foams.
  ▶ Watch

Some modern sauces are served as foams. Gelatin, lecithin or another stabilizer goes into the liquid, which is whipped or pushed through a siphon charged with gas. A foam made in a siphon is called an espuma, Spanish for froth. A fluid gel sits between a sauce, a gel and a purée: it holds still on the plate but flows when stirred, can be served hot or cold, and feels rich and creamy.

Finishing a sauce

• Reduction. Simmering drives off water as steam, so what is left thickens and tastes stronger, with nothing added.
  ▶ Watch
• Straining. A fine mesh chinois, or a china cap (a cone-shaped strainer) with a few layers of cheesecloth inside, removes the flavorings and any lumps of thickener.
  ▶ Watch
• Nappe. This French word names the thickness at which a sauce coats food evenly, neither too thick nor too thin. Dip a spoon in the sauce and turn it over. Draw a finger down the back. If the line stays clean, the sauce is ready. Keep stirring with a metal whisk and hold the heat steady.
  ▶ Watch

The sauce families

The five leading or mother sauces are béchamel, velouté, espagnole (brown sauce), tomato and hollandaise. What sets them apart is mainly the liquid and the thickener. Each is the head of a family of small or compound sauces, made by adding seasonings and garnishes. A small sauce may be named for what is in it, where it came from or who made it.

The liquid and thickener for each mother sauce.

22.3 Emulsions

A simple whisked vinaigrette does not last. Nothing holds the drops apart, so given time they find each other and the dressing separates back into oil and vinegar. It is a temporary emulsion.

To make an emulsion that stays, you need an emulsifier (emulsifying agent). It bonds with both the oily liquid and the watery one and acts as a bridge between them, like a friend holding each by the hand.

The emulsifiers a cook uses most:

• Egg yolk, the most common, in mayonnaise and hollandaise.
  ▶ Watch
• Casein, a protein found in butter.
  ▶ Watch
• Dry mustard, finely ground.
  ▶ Watch
• Honey and Dijon mustard, which are thick enough to work the same way.
  ▶ Watch

Emulsions can be hard to get right, even for practiced chefs, and knowing what is happening in the bowl makes them easier to control. The fats themselves, and the lecithin in egg yolk, are covered with fats and oils. see chapter 19: Emulsifiers

22.4 Demi-glace sauces

Espagnole, the brown sauce

Espagnole means "Spanish". French cooks argue over how the name came about. One story holds that the Spanish cooks of Anne, bride of Louis XIII, added Spanish tomatoes to the French brown sauce for the wedding feast.

Espagnole is a full-bodied, strong brown sauce, seldom put straight on food. It is made from brown stock thickened with brown roux, with mirepoix (diced onion, carrot and celery) and tomato purée. Its main job is to become demi-glace.

To make 4 L (1 gal.):

• Caramelize 1 kg (2 lb) of medium-diced mirepoix well in 250 ml (8 fl oz) of clarified butter.
• Add 250 g (8 oz) of flour and cook it into a brown roux.
  ▶ Watch
• Add 5 L (5 qt) of brown stock and 250 g (8 oz) of tomato purée, stirring out any lumps, bring to a boil and turn down to a simmer.
• Add a sachet of herbs and spices.
• Simmer about 1½ hours, letting it reduce and skimming as needed.
• Pass it through a cheesecloth-lined china cap, then season.

Demi-glace

Demi-glace is equal parts espagnole and brown stock, reduced by half, usually finished with a little Madeira or sherry. To make 1 L (1 qt), simmer 1 L of each together until half is left, then strain. It gives finer small sauces than espagnole used directly, because its base is richer.

A good demi-glace is rich, smooth and free of lumps, with a strong roasted flavor from the browned bones in the stock and no taste of roux. Caramelized bones, mirepoix and tomato give it a glossy color so dark it is nearly chocolate. It should coat food and stay on it, yet never feel pasty or heavy.

Jus lié

Jus lié (also fond lié) does the same job as demi-glace but is lighter and quicker. There are two ways to make it:

• Thicken a rich brown stock with cornstarch or arrowroot, and season it. This is fast, but the sauce is only as good as the stock.
• Simmer and reduce a rich brown stock until its gelatin and other proteins thicken it. This usually tastes better, but costs more in food and time.
  ▶ Watch

A good jus lié is very rich, smooth, dark brown and glossy from its gelatin. It is a little thinner than demi-glace but still clings lightly to food.

Gravy from a roast's jus

Here a gravy means a jus, the natural juices of a roast, thickened with flour. If only a little jus is left in the pan:

• Boil it down on the stove until it caramelizes.
• Pour off all but a spoonful or two of fat.
• Cook flour in the pan for 2 or 3 minutes.
• Add stock, water or another liquid.

If a lot of jus is left:

• Pour it off and skim the fat.
• Make a roux in the roasting pan with some of the fat or fresh butter.
• Whisk the jus back in until smooth and thick.

Flour added at the last minute has little time to cook, so some cooks deglaze the pan with an already thickened velouté or espagnole instead, and leave out the roux.

Small brown sauces

Each small sauce starts from 1 L (1 qt) of demi-glace or jus lié and ends with salt and pepper to taste. Most begin with a reduction of wine and shallots, and many end with butter swirled in.

The small sauces of the espagnole family.

Cooling and holding brown sauces

A finished brown sauce is either cooled in a water bath or kept hot for service. Gravy, and any food containing meat, counts as a potentially hazardous food (PHF), one that lets bacteria grow if it sits at room temperature.

• Holding. Hold hot sauce at 60°C (140°F) or above, and reheat it to 74°C (165°F), kept there 15 seconds or more, before it goes into the hot-holding unit.
• Cooling. Cooked food must fall to 20°C (70°F) from 60°C (140°F) within two hours, then to 4°C (40°F) within four more. A pot of 4 L (1 gal.) or more, which is the size of the espagnole batch, can take a day or longer to cool in a walk-in, so stir it in an ice-water bath or split it into shallow pans.
  ▶ Watch

The full rules for cooling, holding and reheating are with the rest of food safety. see chapter 2: Heat: cooling, holding and reheating

22.5 Béchamel and velouté sauces

Béchamel

Béchamel is the simplest mother sauce: milk thickened with a white roux. The sauce goes back to Renaissance Tuscany, where its gluey texture earned it the name salsa colla, "glue sauce". The cooks of Catherine de' Medici brought it to France in 1533. François Pierre La Varenne gave it a new name in Le Cuisinier François in 1651, and the name it carries now honors Louis de Béchamel, who lived from 1630 to 1703 and served Louis XIV as steward. In Italian it is balsamella or besciamella.

It began as a thick veal velouté with heavy cream stirred in, and some chefs still put veal stock in it. Today it is usually scalded milk, heated to just below the boil, thickened with white roux and seasoned. Scald, do not boil: boiled milk can curdle and look broken. Béchamel goes with vegetables, eggs and gratins. It has lost some favor lately for being rich and heavy, but it is still central to classic sauce making.

It is seasoned with an onion piquet: a bay leaf pinned to a piece of onion with whole cloves, used like tacks. Nutmeg is used sparingly, because it can take over. White roux, barely cooked, has the most thickening power of any roux, and since it cooks so briefly, butter in it adds flavor.

To make 4 L (1 gal.):

• Simmer 4 L of milk with the onion piquet for 20 minutes.
  ▶ Watch
• In another pot make a white roux from 250 g (8 oz) of flour and 250 ml (8 fl oz) of clarified butter.
  ▶ Watch
• Lift out the piquet and add the hot milk to the roux bit by bit, whisking all the time, then bring it to a boil.
  ▶ Watch
• Lower to a simmer, season with salt, white pepper and nutmeg, and cook 30 minutes.
• Pass it through a cheesecloth-lined china cap.
• Spoon a little melted butter over the top so no skin forms.

A good béchamel is rich, creamy and perfectly smooth, never grainy. You can taste the onion and clove, but they do not hide the clean taste of milk. It is the color of heavy cream with a deep sheen, thick enough to coat food lightly, and never tastes of roux.

Béchamel can easily turn gluey or too thick. Its coating thickness (nappe) changes if it is reduced too much or too little, left to stand, refrigerated, or given other ingredients. Some additions cause trouble of their own:

• Cheese can separate if the sauce gets too hot, so it usually goes in at the end and is only just melted. Cheese sauce is covered in more detail with dairy. see chapter 14: Cheese in a sauce
  ▶ Watch
• Mustard, horseradish and lemon are acidic and can curdle the sauce.
• Mushrooms let out water and thin the sauce unless sautéed first.
• Corn is starchy and thickens the sauce further. Crawfish can change its color or overcook. Onions add sweetness. A smoky flavor can easily be too much or too little.

Each small sauce starts from 1 L (1 qt) of béchamel and ends with salt and pepper to taste:

The béchamel family and its uses.

Velouté

Velouté is French for "velvety". It is a white stock (veal or chicken) or a fish stock thickened with roux, and one of the five mother sauces Escoffier set out. A good velouté is rich, smooth and free of lumps. Made from chicken or fish stock, it tastes of chicken or fish; from veal stock, its flavor is more neutral. It is ivory with a deep sheen and clings to food without tasting of roux.

To make 4 L (1 gal.):

• Heat 250 ml (8 fl oz) of clarified butter in a heavy pan, add 250 g (8 oz) of flour and cook a blond roux.
  ▶ Watch
• Whisk in 4.7 L (5 qt) of stock a little at a time, bring to a boil, then simmer and reduce to 4 L, about 30 minutes.
  ▶ Watch
• Season or not, depending on the stock and the use.
• Pass it through a cheesecloth-lined china cap, and spoon melted butter over the top if it must wait.

Veal and chicken velouté are mostly turned into one of two in-between sauces, which then head families of their own:

• Allemande: veal or chicken velouté with a liaison of egg yolk and cream, plus lemon juice. Which stock you use depends on the dish it will go with.
  ▶ Watch
• Suprême: chicken velouté with cream.
  ▶ Watch

To make 4 L of allemande:

• Bring 4 L of velouté to a simmer.
• In a stainless steel bowl whip 8 yolks with 675 ml (24 fl oz) of heavy cream.
• Whisk about a third of the hot velouté into the bowl to temper it, then whisk the warmed mixture into the rest of the sauce.
  ▶ Watch
• Reheat without boiling, add 30 ml (1 fl oz) of lemon juice, season, and strain.

To make 4 L of suprême:

• Simmer 4 L of chicken velouté with 225 g (8 oz) of mushroom trimmings until it loses a quarter of its volume.
• Whisk in 1 L (1 qt) of heavy cream.
• Bring back to a simmer, season and strain.

Each small sauce below starts from 1 L (1 qt) of its base and ends with salt and pepper to taste.

The velouté family.

Keeping white sauces safe

Both sauces are milk, stock or egg, and food of animal origin, including milk and eggs, is potentially hazardous. Hold them hot at 60°C (140°F) or above. To cool them, bring them to 20°C (70°F) from 60°C (140°F) within two hours and to 4°C (40°F) within four more, for example by stirring the container in an ice-water bath.

22.6 Tomato sauces

The first known use of tomato sauce with pasta is in L'Apicio moderno, an Italian cookbook of 1790 by the Roman chef Francesco Leonardi. "Tomato sauce", also called Neapolitan sauce or salsa di pomodoro, covers many sauces made mostly from tomatoes and meant to be part of a dish, not a condiment on the side. They go with meat and vegetables, form the base of Mexican salsas, and dress pasta.

Tomatoes almost make the sauce themselves. They are full of flavor and water, their soft flesh breaks down easily, and as they cook they thicken without roux. The classic mother sauce was tomatoes, vegetables, seasonings and white stock thickened with a blond or brown roux. Most kitchens today skip the roux and simply simmer tomatoes with herbs, spices, vegetables and other flavorings, then purée the lot.

If a tomato sauce is too sharp, finish it with a gastrique: a little sugar cooked to caramel, then thinned with vinegar.

A good tomato sauce is thick, rich and full of flavor. It is a little grainier than most classic sauces but still smooth. The vegetables and seasonings add flavor without any one standing out. It should be deep red, not bitter, sour or too sweet, and thick enough to cling.

To make 4 L (1 gal.) of the classic sauce:

• Render 120 g (4 oz) of diced salt pork, then sauté 750 g (1 lb 8 oz) of mirepoix in the fat without browning it.
• Add 3 L (3 qt) of fresh or canned tomatoes, 2 L (2 qt) of tomato purée, a sachet (thyme, bay, garlic, parsley stems and crushed peppercorns), salt and a little sugar.
  ▶ Watch
• Add 3 L (3 qt) of white stock and 1 kg (2 lb) of pork bones.
• Simmer slowly for 1 to 2 hours, until thick enough.
• Lift out the bones and the sachet, then work the sauce through a food mill.
  ▶ Watch

Each small sauce starts from 1 L (1 qt) of tomato sauce and ends with salt and pepper to taste:

• Creole: sauté finely diced onion, sliced celery and garlic in oil; add the tomato sauce with a bay leaf and thyme and simmer 15 minutes; add sliced green pepper and hot pepper sauce and simmer 15 minutes more; remove the bay leaf.
• Spanish: Creole sauce with sliced mushrooms cooked along with the onion, garnished with sliced black or green olives.
• Milanaise: sauté sliced mushrooms in butter, add the tomato sauce, stir in julienned cooked ham and tongue, and bring to a simmer.

Once made, the sauce is cooled in a water bath and refrigerated. Cooked vegetables count as potentially hazardous food, and this sauce also holds stock and pork. Cool it to 20°C (70°F) from 60°C (140°F) within two hours and to 4°C (40°F) within four more, and keep it refrigerated at 4°C or colder.

22.7 Hollandaise and butter sauces

Hollandaise

Hollandaise is clarified butter emulsified into a sabayon, egg yolks whisked over heat until fluffy. The name is French for "Dutch sauce", though the link to Holland is unclear. "Dutch sauce" appears in English as early as 1573, without a recipe. The first written recipe comes from La Varenne's Le Cuisinier François of 1651, for asparagus: butter, a little vinegar, salt, nutmeg and "an egg yolk to bind the sauce; take care that it doesn't curdle".

Egg yolks are rich in lecithin, a natural emulsifier. When the yolks are whisked hard with a little water and lemon juice or vinegar while warm butter goes in slowly, the lecithin coats each drop of fat and keeps it suspended. Each ingredient has a job:

• Yolks carry the lecithin.
  ▶ Watch
• Clarified butter gives a steadier sauce than whole butter, and is the traditional choice.
• Acid balances the flavor and cuts the fat.
• Water helps hold the emulsion together.

Emulsions last for different lengths of time. Mayonnaise is a permanent emulsion and lasts several days or longer. Hollandaise is semi-permanent and lasts a few hours. A vinaigrette with no emulsifier is temporary and lasts only moments.

A good hollandaise is smooth, buttery, pale and very rich, free of lumps and showing no sign of separating. Butter leads the flavor without hiding the egg, lemon and vinegar. It is frothy and light, not heavy like mayonnaise.

Three techniques

• Double boiler (bain-marie): a bowl set over hot water. The water cannot pass 212°F, while a pan on the burner can, so it suits food that burns or curdles easily.
  ▶ Watch
• Tempering: warming something cold, such as eggs, a little at a time by stirring in hot liquid slowly.
  ▶ Watch
• Sabayon stage: yolks whipped until they hold a ribbon when the whisk is lifted. Sabayon is really a dessert sauce of yolks, sugar and wine, and this is the texture to reach before any butter goes in.
  ▶ Watch

Making hollandaise

Six pasteurized yolks and 450 ml (1 pt) of warm clarified butter make 750 ml (24 fl oz) of classic hollandaise.

• Reduce 90 ml (3 fl oz) of white wine vinegar and 60 ml (2 fl oz) of water with ½ tsp of crushed white peppercorns by half.
• Strain the reduction onto the yolks in a stainless steel bowl, about 15 ml (½ fl oz) for each yolk.
  ▶ Watch
• Whip over a double boiler until thick enough that the whisk leaves a trail, about as thick as lightly whipped cream. Take the bowl off the heat at once. Yolks cooked even slightly too far can no longer emulsify.
  ▶ Watch
• Whip in 30 ml (1 fl oz) of lemon juice to stop the yolks cooking.
• Add the warm butter a few drops at a time, whipping all the time. Once the emulsion has formed, the butter can go in faster. The butter should be warm but not hot enough to cook the yolks further.
  ▶ Watch
• Whip in the rest of the lemon juice, season with salt, white pepper and cayenne, and strain through cheesecloth if needed.
  ▶ Watch

In the blender method, 9 pasteurized yolks, warm water, lemon juice and seasonings are blended for about 5 seconds. Then 750 g (24 oz) of whole butter, heated to about 80°C (175°F) so that it cooks the yolks, is poured in a steady stream while the blender runs, all of it within 20 to 30 seconds. Strain out any lumps.

The balance of yolk to butter matters. As a general rule one yolk can hold 8 oz of clarified butter (or of oil, for mayonnaise). Too few yolks for the butter and the sauce breaks; extra yolks make it steadier but can make it heavy. Butter added too fast breaks it, and so does butter added too slowly.

Holding hollandaise safely

Hot food is held at 60°C (140°F) or above, and 4°C to 60°C (40°F to 140°F) is the danger zone, where most harmful bacteria grow. Hollandaise cannot be held that hot: above 65°C (150°F) the yolks cook and the sauce breaks and turns grainy, and below 7°C (45°F) the butter sets. So the sauce sits inside the danger zone while it waits, and that wait has limits:

• Make it as close to service as you can, in small batches, with clean, sanitized tools.
• Hold it in a warm, not simmering, bain-marie, for no more than 1½ hours. Because it sits in the danger zone, 2 hours is the outside limit.
• Never mix an old batch with a new one.
• Anything you add to it must also be at the right temperature.

Temperature also decides whether the sauce holds together. A perfect hollandaise left somewhere too hot or too cold will break, and one made with yolks or butter that were too cold will break when it meets hot food.

When hollandaise breaks

A broken hollandaise looks thin, grainy or lumpy: the emulsion never formed, or the butter, eggs and liquid have come apart. The causes:

• eggs or butter too hot or too cold
  ▶ Watch
• butter added too quickly
• yolks overcooked
  ▶ Watch
• too much butter
• not enough whisking

Some cooks rescue a broken sauce and some start again; it depends on how much time you have. To rescue it:

• Decide whether it is too hot (let it cool) or too cold (warm it over a double boiler).
• Put 15 ml (1 tbsp) of water in a clean stainless steel bowl for each liter of sauce. If the yolks were overcooked or there was too much butter, add a fresh yolk to the water first.
  ▶ Watch
• Slowly beat the broken sauce into it.

Small hollandaise sauces

Each starts from 1 L (1 qt) of hollandaise and ends with salt and pepper to taste. Some chefs count béarnaise as a mother sauce in its own right.

The hollandaise family.

Beurre blanc and beurre rouge

Beurre blanc (white butter) and beurre rouge (red butter) are butter sauces emulsified with no egg at all. The small amount of lecithin and other emulsifiers in butter itself holds the fat in the water. They are like hollandaise in idea but are not counted as leading or small sauces. They are thinner and lighter than hollandaise, smooth and just thicker than heavy cream.

There are three main ingredients: shallots, wine (white for blanc, red for rouge) and butter, used whole rather than clarified. Shallots and wine bring flavor; the butter is the sauce. A good one is rich and buttery but neutral enough to take herbs, spices or vegetable purées. It is pale, light and airy, yet liquid and able to cling.

• Choose the pan. Aluminum discolors the sauce, a thin pan heats unevenly, and a nonstick pan makes the emulsion hard to set.
• Boil down the wine with the shallots and any seasonings over medium heat au sec, meaning until nearly dry. Some chefs add a little heavy cream and reduce again; it is not needed, but it steadies the sauce.
  ▶ Watch
• Whisk in well-chilled butter a little at a time. Cold butter lets the fat, water and milk solids join the sauce slowly as it melts.
  ▶ Watch
• Strain and hold in a bain-marie.

For 1 L (1 qt), reduce 30 ml (1 fl oz) of white wine, 120 ml (4 fl oz) of white wine vinegar, salt, white pepper and 30 g (1 oz) of minced shallot to about 30 ml (2 tbsp). More liquid left in the pan gives too thin a sauce; reduce au sec for a thicker one. Then whisk in 1 kg (2 lb) of chilled butter, cut in 30 g (1 oz) pieces, a few pieces at a time over low heat. The cold butter keeps the sauce between 38°C and 49°C (100°F and 120°F).

Heat is the enemy here too. At 58°C (136°F) some of the emulsifying proteins start to break down and let go of their fat, and a long time above that splits the sauce. A split sauce can be saved by cooling it to about 43–49°C (110–120°F) and whisking. Below 30°C (85°F) the butterfat sets, and if that sauce is warmed again it separates for good. Cold beurre blanc can still be whisked at room temperature into a soft flavored butter.

Beurre blanc is held for service at 38–54°C (100–130°F). That whole range lies inside the danger zone of 4°C to 60°C (40°F to 140°F), and most of it inside the super danger zone of 20–49°C (70–120°F), where pathogens grow very fast.

Variations on the same base:

• Beurre rouge: dry red wine and red wine vinegar in place of white.
• Lemon-dill: warm lemon juice and chopped fresh dill whisked in.
• Pink peppercorn: crushed pink peppercorns in the shallot and wine reduction of a beurre rouge, with whole ones to garnish.

Compound butters

A compound butter (beurre composé) is softened whole butter with flavorings worked in. It colors and flavors small sauces, or is a sauce in itself: a slice of maître d'hôtel (parsley) butter set on a grilled steak or fish melts into a sauce as it is served. Mix the butter and flavorings in a blender, food processor or mixer. Roll it into a log in parchment or plastic wrap, chill it and slice as needed, or pipe rosettes and chill them. Most last two or three days chilled, and longer in the freezer.

Each of these starts from 500 g (1 lb) of softened unsalted butter, seasoned with salt and pepper:

• Basil: minced basil and shallot with lemon juice.
• Herb: as much as 250 ml (1 cup) of fresh herbs, chopped: dill, parsley, chives, chervil or tarragon.
  ▶ Watch
• Lobster or crayfish: cooked meat, shells or coral ground with the butter, clarified, strained through cheesecloth, chilled, and the firm fat lifted off.
• Maître d'hôtel: chopped parsley, lemon juice and white pepper.
  ▶ Watch
• Montpellier: blanched parsley, chervil, watercress and tarragon, with minced hard-boiled yolk, garlic and gherkin.
• Red pepper: roasted, peeled red peppers puréed until liquid. Shallot: blanched, dried, finely diced shallots.

22.8 Gravies and other sauces

Pan gravy

Pan gravy is made in the pan the meat or poultry roasted in. Strictly it is a sauce, a liquid thickened with roux, but it picks up extra flavor from the drippings, and its roux is made with some of the fat the roast gave off. It should have everything a brown sauce has, with a meatier taste. A smaller home version, made from pot roast drippings, is with moist-heat cooking. see chapter 9: Gravy from the drippings

• Lift the cooked meat out of the pan. Add mirepoix to the drippings if none went in during roasting.
  ▶ Watch
• Set the pan on the stove and cook off the remaining moisture so the fat clears. Pour off the fat and keep it for the roux.
  ▶ Watch
• Deglaze the pan with a suitable stock, loosening the browned juices. Finish the gravy in the roasting pan, or move the liquid to a saucepan, which is easier to handle.
  ▶ Watch
• Add stock or water to make the amount of gravy you need.
• Make enough roux in a separate pan with some of the saved fat, stir it into the liquid and bring it to a simmer.
  ▶ Watch
• Simmer until the mirepoix is cooked through, its flavor is drawn out and the flour no longer tastes raw. Strain and season.
  ▶ Watch

Pan sauces

Sautéed meat, poultry or fish often gets a sauce made in the same pan. The food comes out and is kept warm, and stock, jus lié or another liquid deglazes the pan. Like pan gravy, a pan sauce gains flavor from the drippings, but it is usually thickened by reduction, not starch. How to sauté is covered with dry heat. see chapter 8: Sauté and pan-frying

Coulis

A coulis is a purée of vegetables or fruit, strained before serving. A vegetable coulis may be hot or cold and goes with meat, fish, shellfish, poultry, vegetables or starches. It is often built on one vegetable, such as broccoli, tomato or sweet red pepper, cooked with onion, garlic, shallot, herbs or spices. Made with very little fat, it is a light choice next to a heavy classic sauce. A fruit coulis, often of fresh or frozen berries, is usually a dessert sauce: puréed fruit loosened with sugar syrup.

To make a vegetable coulis:

• Cook the main vegetable and flavorings in a suitable liquid.
• Purée them with a blender, food processor or food mill.
  ▶ Watch
• Simmer the purée with liquid to blend the flavors.
• Strain, thin and season.

Most coulis are about as thick as a thin tomato sauce, though some are left grainy or even lumpy on purpose. The main ingredient should lead the flavor and color.

Contemporary sauces

Modern chefs turn more and more to salsas, relishes, juices, broths, essences and flavored oils. These do not depend on meat stocks or starch. They are built on fresh vegetables, vegetable juice, aromatic broth and strong oils, and their names are not fixed the way classic names are. Most are quicker to make, often lighter and lower in fat, but they still rest on classic technique, and they should still suit the food, never overpower it.

• Salsa (Spanish for "sauce") and relish are usually cold, chunky mixtures of herbs, spices, fruit or vegetables, such as orange, pineapple, papaya, black beans, jicama or tomatillos. They belong to no classic family but suit meat, poultry, fish and shellfish, and are bright, colorful, quick and low in fat.
  ▶ Watch
• Chutney is a sweet-sour condiment of fruit or vegetables simmered with vinegar, sugar and spices; some are puréed and some keep their pieces.
• Vegetable juice sauces start from raw carrots, beets, spinach and the like run through a juice extractor. Heat the juice with stock, lemon juice or herbs, reduce it if needed, strain it through a fine chinois, season and whisk in butter. One vegetable gives the clearest flavor; mixing too many muddies color and taste. Menus may call these an essence or a tea. They suit pasta, fish, shellfish, poultry and vegetarian dishes.
• Broth, which menus may also call a nage, an essence, a tea or au jus, is a thin, well-flavored liquid served in a shallow pool under the food. It adds moisture and flavor without turning the dish into soup. Often it is just the cooking liquid, reduced and strained; or a flavored stock, tomato for example, can be clarified like consommé.
• Vinaigrette, oil with vinegar, citrus or another acid, makes a quick sauce that seems light, though the oil can add a good deal of fat.
  ▶ Watch

Flavored oils

A few drops of a strongly flavored oil dress or garnish salads, soups, vegetables, starches and main dishes. Choose a good-quality oil with little taste of its own, such as canola, peanut or safflower, unless the flavor suits olive oil, as basil does. Flavor comes out better if the herbs, fruit or vegetables are crushed, puréed or cooked first; warm the oil for dried herbs or spices, and sweat spices or seeds in a little oil to make a paste.

Fresh garlic in oil is a potentially hazardous food, though fresh garlic and cooking oil on their own are not. Some bacteria grow only where there is no oxygen. To flavor an oil, the oil and flavorings stand in a sealed jar at room temperature for anywhere from 1 to 24 hours, shaken now and then, until the flavor is strong enough; left longer, the oil can turn harsh or bitter. The oil is then poured through a chinois with a coffee filter inside and kept covered in the refrigerator.

Keeping gravy safe

22.9 Cooking without wine

Wine gives a sauce acidity, and red wine adds body and color too. When a dish has to be made without alcohol, other liquids can do the same work.

Replacing the acidity

To replace the acidity of 1 cup of wine or another alcoholic ingredient, use one of these:

• ½ cup of verjus
• 1 to 2 teaspoons of lemon juice
• 1 to 2 teaspoons of white wine vinegar

Stir the replacement in a little at a time, tasting as you go, and stop when the sauce tastes right rather than adding the full amount at once.

In place of red wine

• Pomegranate juice, cooked down, gives a full body that stands in well for red wine.
  ▶ Watch
• Very strong tea with a little vinegar comes close to dry red wine, because the tea brings the same bitter tannins.
  ▶ Watch
• Water, then a big splash of balsamic vinegar, deglazes a quick pan sauce.
  ▶ Watch
• Dealcoholized red wine is sold for cooking; it tastes much like sparkling grape juice.
  ▶ Watch
• Vegetable stock can take the place of red wine in a chili or stew.
  ▶ Watch

In place of white wine

• Broth with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, in the same amount as the wine.
  ▶ Watch
• White grape juice.
  ▶ Watch
• White wine vinegar, using half as much as the wine.
  ▶ Watch

How much alcohol cooks off

A braise does not need wine at all; it can be cooked in stock alone.

When wine is used, cooking drives off much of the alcohol but never all of it. Two habits remove the most:

• Add the wine first and let it reduce before the other liquids go in.
  ▶ Watch
• Leave the lid off while the wine cooks, so the alcohol can escape.
  ▶ Watch