Sauce

In a sauce is a thick liquid which may be used to add flavor to food, to moisten it and/or make it look more attractive on the plate. Sauces form an important part of traditional French cuisine. These French-style sauces are thickened with starch or roux (flour cooked in butter) and fall into two basic categories - brown sauces, which are based on demi-glace, a reduction of browned veal and beef bones, and white sauces, based on velouté, a reduction of the meat and bones of veal, chicken or both, or of fish. Also important in French cuisine are sauces in the Béchamel family, based on flour and thickened milk, "emulsified sauces", which use eggs as emulsifiers to combine normally immiscible ingredients such as oil and vinegar, and "butter sauces", in which butter fat is re-emulsified back to a state resembling the original

There are also many sauces based on tomato, other vegetables and various spices. Asian cooking uses an entirely different range of sauces.

Sauces can also be sweet, and used either hot or cold to accompany and garnish a dessert.

Some examples of sauces:

White Sauces

velouté
sauce Allemande
mushroom sauce
sauce Suprême
sauce Américaine

Brown Sauces

sauce Africaine
Bordelaise sauce
Bourguignonne sauce
Chateauxbriand
sauce Robert

Béchamel family

Emulsified sauces

Hollandaise sauce
Mayonnaise
Béarnaise sauce

Butter sauces

Beurre blanc

Sweet Sauces

custard sauce
sauce Anglaise or crème Anglaise
chocolate sauce
cranberry sauce
fruit sauces

Hot sauces

Asian Sauces

soy sauce
fish sauce
hoi sin sauce
oyster sauce
black bean sauce
duck sauce, or plum sauce
sweet and sour sauce
sambal

Other sauces

Also see: condiment, coulis, custard, garum, salsa, ketchup, mustard, toenjang, kochujang.

References

The Saucier's Apprentice. Sokolov, Raymond. Knopf, 1976. ISBN 0394489209

On Food and Cooking. McGee, Harold. Macmillan, 1984. ISBN 0020346212

The Curious Cook. McGee, Harold. Macmillan, 1990. ISBN 0020098104